


A Shot in the Dark

by nimrodcracker



Series: the long road [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Amnesia, Asian Courier, Body Dysphoria, Canon Divergence, F/F, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, One-Eyed Blindness, Platonic Life Partners, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 11:09:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3247454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimrodcracker/pseuds/nimrodcracker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She could skewer a cazador right between its eyes with her battered carabiner a mile out, but she couldn't express herself even if her sorry hide depended on it.</p><p>In all the years that Cass knew the reticent soldier-turned-courier, the most she got out of those damned lips were phrases - broken and stilted, but so unlike the person such words hid.</p><p>And that was even before that woman took two bullets to the head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Act 1

**Author's Note:**

> AU where Cass met Six before the events of New Vegas, so she's the only person around who can help Six deal with her head-injury-induced amnesia. Follows the NCR questline otherwise. 
> 
> Again, themes of dark thoughts, suicide and body dysphoria abound in this fic.

Cass still remembered the first time she noticed the raven-haired soldier: a disheveled figure stumbling into the Outpost, brown leathers draped in blood and dust, like the remains of a deathclaw's chew toy. That woman had plopped herself on a bar stool close by and _sagged_ , as if a Brahmin was piggybacking on those narrow shoulders, before asking the no-nonsense bartender for Absinthe like 'twas a regular bottle of water. That was when Cass knew this one was special, 'cause all the NCR pansies in this joint drank the swill meant for pregnant ladies in their downtime and already they run screaming to the dumps with vomit churning in their bellies.

Cass had been swirling her grimy glass of whiskey whilst enjoying the solitude, but that lady soon jammed a lighted cigarette between cracked lips. Puffs of smoke started to nip away at Cass' lungs, and she recalled giving that NCR hotshot a biting tirade - only for the soldier to snuff out her light-stick, just like that.

_Sorry_ , she'd said, and Cass was _stumped_.

Most NCR regulars acted like brats, walking into bars like they owned the place, but this one didn't. Maybe it had something to do with the red beret adorning her short hair, or the lethargy swirling around her like a sandstorm.

Five shots in, the bereaved soldier began to lean on the scoped hunting rifle standing by her side, its stock chipped and worn all over. That was when Cass knew the woman was teetering on the edge of sobriety, about to hurl the disgusting contents of her guts all over the bar...or so Cass thought.

Instead, the woman matched her gaze, her gray eyes surprisingly devoid of the haze of alcohol. She'd asked if Cass was a trader, a caravan merchant, 'cause she needed someone to send dough back to the Republic.

Cass was bored, waiting for one of her caravans to turn up at the Outpost with barrels of water, but it _had_ been a few days. Those questions stoked her curiosity, made her eager to know what made the silent soldier tick, so Cass challenged the soft-spoken soldier to a bout o' drinking.

_Get me thoroughly drunk on good ol' whiskey first. I'll foot the bill and send your goddamn money to your ma and your sis for less._

Cass figured the woman would raise _hell_ \- smash the butt of that sturdy rifle in her face, or even leave - but no. The soldier's face lit up with a smile, lips curling a simple okay with enough confidence to give the redhead pause. But Cass didn't do self-doubt or any of the sort, so she did it anyway, clinking bottles with a woman old enough to be her younger sister by a couple of years, until it hurt to even count the bottles on the bartop.

She woke up slumped over the bartop the next day, with a throbbing headache and eyes that begged to be plucked from their sockets. Her fumbling hands soon found a crumpled note tucked under the bottom of an empty bottle, a messy scrawl etched on the yellowish paper.

_Money's with the barkeep, and I paid my end of our tab. Better keep your pockets full, Red, I'll be back._

Cass had laughed then, amused at being fucked over at her own game. She'd always thought she could hold her drink better than most in the whole of the blasted Mojave, until _she_ showed up. Had to cough up a caravan run's worth of caps in the process, but _hell_ yeah, it'd been _so_ fucking worth it.

With day-old saliva crusted on her lips and hair falling out of her bun, Cass realised that maybe, some shithead _finally_ decided that the company of a fucked-up crazy who ran a caravan company wasn't that bad. What did they keep calling them?

Ah, yes. _Friends_.

* * *

_Sorry I can't send over your letters and caps back to Shady Sands this time._

_For?_

_Your ma and sis?_

_I do?_ _I don't remember._

_You don't remem-wait, what happened during your last delivery?_

_I got shot._

_This ain't some simple graze. He shot you through, ain't he?_

_I-well, he lodged a bullet in my skull. Then left me in a grave to rot. Until a Securitron dug me up._

* * *

That woman became a courier, her doughboy garb making way for an unassuming biker jacket draped over a thin cloth shirt.

'twas what Cass managed to worm out of her the next time they saw each other at the Outpost, while she waited - _again_ \- for a caravan that had ventured up north to Zion. It wasn't that the woman with the rolled-up jacket sleeves refused to talk, just that she acted as if _anything_ she said would get herself killed. Sure, she said she used to be First Recon, but after that she just _mooned_ and stared at the bottom of her glass, knuckles white as chalk.

The courier didn't say anything after that, just passed along a little packet of paper that was soft to the touch. _Money_ , she'd offhandedly mumbled, eyes stubbornly fixed on her glass. That was when Cass started rambling to fill the silence, to curt replies and restrained nods.

_You keep comin' round like a bad habit._

_Too bad the Outpost's the only decent place on the Long 15._

_How do you lot not get chewed by deathclaws or, say, raiders?_

_It's easy to hide if you know the land._  

When Cass mentioned moonshine not long after, the woman's eyes lit up with such _hunger_ that it gave Cass the willies. That kind of look belonged on nightstalkers, and _not_ on banged-up wastelanders.

The poor sod was suffering from battle trauma, Cass knew. Just like the empty, hollowed husks that sat in the corner near the back, away from the bar, away from the world. They'd always hang around for a bit, and Cass would never see them again.

_Sent back home with a little medal on their chest_ , Lacey had quietly mentioned when Cass' gaze lingered on those louts a moment too long. _They come as kids, and leave older than their years._

She'd wondered about the courier, how that lady carried the google-eyes like 'twas nothing while delivering forsaken packages to where they were wanted. That woman seemed to be doing fine, drowning herself in spirits strong enough to knock out a deathclaw and then some, yet remained sober enough to carry a conversation. Though, that was before she candidly remarked that they were watered down, 'cause that habit of hers guzzled up caps faster than the NCR claiming uncharted America.

But the courier never stayed long, always emptying half a bottle of something before she left in the night. She was a creature of habit, clinging on to the stability it gave her, and Cass picked up on that. Saw how she'd always pour whatever swill she ordered till her glass was half-empty, before she'd nurse it with little, baby sips. The courier's mannerisms were forgettable, but always there.

Cass would rather swallow 'em in one unladylike gulp, though. Good ol' scotch 'n whiskey weren't delicate drinks meant for itty bitty sips, those things were for pansies, and Cass wasn't one.

The courier never shied from Cass' questions, because Cass wasn't stupid enough to muck about with personal questions. Still, while Cass watched the doors shut behind a cloaked figure, she was left with more questions than answers. _That_ made Cass wait for the courier's booted feet to bounce against broken tile floors with bated breath, every single time.

Once, the courier had asked her about some philosophical psychobabble between sips of spiked Nuka-Cola. Cass wouldn't have thought much of it as usual, but the messy fringe that splayed over the courier's brows seemed to lend her an air of fragility that Cass hadn't sensed before. Others would call what Cass felt the ' _big sibling instinct_ ', but Cass knew it to be nothing more than ' _foolhardy_ _sentiment_ '.

_Do you believe in redemption, Red?_

_Naw, that shit ain't fer me._ _I just drink my whiskey and it gets a whole lot better._

The courier laughed, a harsh sound like the barstool legs that scraped against grimy stone floors.

_If only it was that easy._

_Bah, stop gettin' in over your head. How does a round of Caravan sound?_

_Sure._

That night passed quickly, but even Cass couldn't unsee the shadows that lurked beneath the courier's glacial irises, peeking through the concentration in her eyes. The courier never said much, but her eyes gave away more than her locked lips would ever say.

* * *

_I remember you, Sharon...Cassidy? I know I served, but nothing else._

_First Recon, ring a bell?_

_Yeah. Know their faces an-and what I did._

_Alright. Anythin' else?_

_Courier. Only 'cause I woke up with this delivery order._

_Well, fuck._

* * *

The next time Cass saw her was when her own pack was bulging with gecko meat and fission batteries from her latest foray into the wasteland, scouting towns and seeing the land. There were whispers of fear, of chaos and carnage, that the frumenarii were raiding NCR territory, that the Legion was back in business.

Her papers, on the other hand, were taking _forever_ to process. No thanks to the fucked-up jackshits of the bureaucracy.

Cass didn't care for the Legion man-boys who played dress-up, 'cause they were just like all the rest who screwed up good, honest business. She knew the Van Graffs traded with them - sure, go ahead, that family's a bunch of bloodthirsty deathclaws on a good day too - but she wasn't about to expose her caravaneers to fucked-up psychopaths.

She was heading up the pockmarked freeway towards the massive statues of the Rangers when she heard the muffled thumps of boots in time with her steps. She would've unslung her trusty shotgun with her finger curled around the trigger, if not for the whiff of gun oil and desert dust in the passing breeze.

_Not staying this time, urgent package to collect,_  she heard the courier say, said person clutching the straps of her backpack with a clenched fist. Her face was impassive, like it always was, but Cass could see the apology mirrored in her slowing steps which she inexorably followed too.

_What's it this time?_

_Some chip._

_Just a chip? I smell a rotting mole rat 'ere._

_Person's paying plenty for it, so I don't ask. As long as my mam gets the money._

Cass' stomach churned at the notion as she walked the courier to the other gate of the Outpost, a gate that faced a road stretching far into the distance. She knew better than to dismiss her instincts, but she didn't know how to separate them - thinking about both her fucked-up caravans and the delivery the courier was about to make, one that took her beyond the regular routes of the Mojave Express.

Shit was about to _blow_ , Cass knew, as her hand waved agoodbye to the figure vanishing into the sunset.

* * *

Cass doesn't see her for a very long time after that. She wondered if the sniper forgot about her, if the woman thought little of their time spent drinking together in a dingy bar that reeked of stale sweat. That thought left a sour taste in her mouth, like the first time she tried brewing a few gallons of Moonshine in some decrepit shack miles away from civilisation.

For fuck's sake, _quit_  mopin'. Who said this was the first time someone left? She was _thirty-seven_ , damn it! But you know what, Cass thought as she gulped down her watered down whiskey at a second-rate bar, _fuck it all_.

Some asshole looked at her funny and she growled, enough to make 'im stare somewhere else. So many dirtbags in this stinkhole, and too little fun. She definitely wasn't comin' back here, the pathetic excuse of slosh they served staring at her from the glass in her grasp. Shitty drink like this sure ain't cost the craploads of caps the barkeep wanted.

Where was this place again? Her eyes wandered as her thoughts did the same, taking in the peeling plaster of the ceiling and the leery bartender wiping his glasses with a grimy cloth.

Ah, yes. A _dustball_ called Nipton.

* * *

Everything was going to _hell_ , Cass concluded. Legion overrunning Camp Searchlight, her caravans getting lost and never arriving? Her list of contracts was getting shorter by the week, and she couldn't hear the jangle of caps in her pockets no more. Her little dream was being crushed inch by inch, and she started seeing an unfamiliar face in bathroom mirrors staring back at her. With the dark circles and a permanent crease on the forehead, it'd been impossible to recognise the person as herself.

Sure, she'd considered using the courier's money to pay off her debts, but in the end, Cass wasn't a jackass. But heck, the packet of dough pressing through her pants pocket was another reminder that the caravan 'twas supposed to make a run to Shady Sands ne'er made it to the Outpost. It wasn't that Cass didn't care anymore, despite what the empty bottles strewn around her on the greasy countertop seemed to show. She simply _didn't_ have any bloody brilliant ideas anymore, what more with some McLafferty person breathing down her neck about her beloved caravans.

_Sell your caravans to me_ , the letter said, _and Crimson Caravan will settle your debts in full._

She clutched that letter tightly, reading the typewritten text again and again until they melted into a disjointed mass of lines and spots to her. Another gulp of her scotch straight from the bottle, and her throat _seized_ at the contact. The drink warmed the very ends of her fingers, so much so that she missed the creak of the double doors swinging open, of wood groaning heavily on its hinges. Nothing really tied her down anymore, no purpose, nor reason to stay. Maybe if she had a few more bottles, she'd not wake up tomorrow. Or even the day after. Heck, maybe even _forever._

And to her, that sounded a hell lot better than the shitpile she was neck deep in.

Booted feet on cracked tiles. Did she know this sound? Cass was sloshed, _so very sloshed_ with the liquid swirling in her veins. She couldn't think straight no more.

A dark blur sat beside her at the bar, but Cass looked away into the comforting constancy of amber liquid. Probably more of those green fuckwits the NCR seemed to rely on more and more these days.

_Hey, what happened?_

_Piss off, who'ever you are._

_Cass. It's me. The courier._

The bottle of scotch disappeared from her sight, leaving Cass with a vague sense of emptiness. The fuck was this shithead _doing_?

_Last warning, dipshit. My fists are gettin' a-twitchy._

A hand grasped her jaw and _jerked_. Before Cass could let loose a fist, she saw gray irises, ones filled with something she couldn't be sure of - worry, fear...heck, _amusement_?

_Fuck, I know you._

_Courier. First Recon. I out-drank you the other day._

_Fuck, I do know you._

_It's alright, Cass. Get some sleep first. You're wasted._

Someone locked an arm under her tense shoulders and pulled her up from the stool, but Cass couldn't see much through the fog of drink, let alone push away the vice-like grip of the person, _the courier_.

_N-no, I can handle my dri-_

A calloused finger pressed against her lips. Cass' lips slid shut at the contact, and the denial died in her throat.

_You didn't, this time._

Her leather-bound feet dragged noisily against the tiles for while longer, before softness enveloped her being - a layer of warm blanketing her against the chill of the Mojave night. She remembered a warm hand against her damp forehead and the rush of air above her head, and she supposed her hat had gone off, because they sure _ain't_  got fans in here.

_How much did you drink, Cass?_

_Dunno. Never had t-to count my bottles before._

_Sleep tight, Cass._

_Piss off._

Cass wanted to clamber out of the bed she laid on, give that do-gooder a piece of her fucking mind, but even alcohol-fired reflexes couldn't dupe her body into moving, not when her limbs felt like lead and the bighorners were stomping everywhere in her head.

* * *

_Say, if you can't remember anything after your soldier days, then how'd you recognise me?_

_I just do._

_Not much to go on, that._

_I just knew, somehow. Maybe it was the whiskey._

_Of course it'd be the whiskey. It always is._

_Maybe it's something else. It has to be._

_You'd just be busting your brain thinkin' about it._

* * *

The next morning, she found the courier in the corner where the fuck-ups sat, digging a spoon into a bowl of mash in front of her.

Cass marched up to her like a great dust storm, intent on _ripping_ the woman to icky, little pieces with cutting words, but that was until she saw the bandages. She remembered swearing, facing the courier with questions on her lips - because what sane person wouldn't wonder about the cloth wrapped around the woman's head and right eye? But the courier cut Cass off, asking if the redhead felt better, like the fucking paragon of girl scouts she was. Didn't she realise that her head injury made Cass' hangover seem like an episode of rainbows and Fancy Lad Snacks falling from the radioactive sky instead?

_The fuck's wrong with your head?_

_Got shot. Someone else wanted the chip._

_Oh sure, like we get shot in the head everyday._

_I'm still here, right?_

_Fantastic, I know. Who'd ever stop to drink with an inebriated tribal who can't shut her trap?_

The courier didn't reply, pausing to push some mash between her lips with shaky hands, and it was then when Cass noticed the faint scar running the length of her cheek and under the linen bandages. Were they new, or had they always existed - unknown and hidden like the person it marred?

When the courier asked her what was bothering her so much, Cass found herself religiously examining a spot of mash smeared on the woman's teeth, with her own lips kept firmly shut.

It wasn't that Cass refused to respond. Some silences were simply more truthful than words.

Six whole months or so since the former soldier stumbled into the Outpost looking like a ghoul, and the soldier had _never_ ribbed Cass about her drinking. Just the measured glances, and questions asked that never condemned. And it took _six_ whole months for Cass to realise that the courier trusted her to know her own limits, to know how many bottles she could take before sobriety was no more. But it didn't happen the night before, so the courier knew something big was nipping at Cass' heels.

Simply put, there wasn't any point in hiding the truth anymore.

It came out in an ungainly tumble of words, ridden with the bitterness of a scorned woman. In fact, the longer Cass spoke, the more the sinking feeling grew - that there was something more to it than a random spell of bad luck. It wasn't like her gut to fib about things like this.

_Come with me._

_Tell me that cocksucker who shot you's gonna get what's comin' to him. From you and me both._

The courier gave that enigmatic smile again, one that crinkled the skin around her eyes.

_Yeah. Find out what's wrong with your caravans too._

_Do you walk around with a halo on your head? 'cause my eyes hurt so bad from all the light._

_I thought you'd want some help._

_Hey, don't get all serious, I was just foolin' around with ya._   _Look, there's mash on your chin._

That was how she'd recall getting dragged into a quest that turned out to be more than just snatching a gambling chip from someone's dead, clammy hands. She could still feel the tingling coursing through her veins like it was just yesterday, with her trusty shotgun slung over a shoulder and bag straps digging into another, filling her with raw purpose and direction. She didn't want to admit it, but Cass knew there was only so much more her body could take before the bottom of a bottle was the last thing she ever saw.

Five weeks down the road, Cass would realise that the courier never had to say anything that day, and _already_ she'd feel shitloads better.

What did they keep calling them these days?

Ah, yes. _Friends._


	2. Act 2

_Cass, there are letters in my pack._

_You used to write to your sis, and I passed 'em along through my caravans._

_Why don't I talk about my Da?_

_Uh, Six, you ever read the dogtags round your neck?_

_So he's dead, then._

_Dead and honoured by our lovely country, mind you._

* * *

Cass knew how much of a lucky fucker she was, standing in front of a Legion crazy spewing the Brahmin shit of Caeser.

Fine, she'd admired the psychos for their unerring ability to look after their own, caravans who traded with them included, but the good bits ended there. With how they treated their women, the Legion were nothing better than _beasts_ , and Cass wanted to shove her shotgun between the buttcracks of those skirt-toting fucktards and pull the trigger.

Well, not really, after thinking of all the extra gun oil and cloth she would have to borrow from the courier to wipe away the mess.

Nipton was a smouldering wreck, the faces she knew now frozen in death, their bodies nailed to crosses lining the path to the Community Hall. Not too long ago, those paths were filled by the proud denizens of the town, going about their lives as best as they could.

 _No_ , she corrected herself, more like a town filled with the worst kinds of _filth_ humanity had to offer. Vice and sin - she saw it everywhere that night, flowing effortlessly like the watered-down booze they served.

The words of the Legion officer with the furry hat would be lost to the bowels of time, but Cass would still be able to picture the tense frame of the courier, trembling fingers bunched into a tight fist and eyes blazing with _fury_.

In all her years walking the wastes, Cass never saw anything else that could burn right through her skin like that. Funnily enough, the courier never needed to open her goddamn mouth.

* * *

She doesn't realise when she became 'Cass', a name that _oh-so-casually_ rolls off the courier's tongue. Only during a starless night beside a roaring campfire, when the courier catches her attention with a mess tin filled with cram in her hands, do the rusty cogs click in her mind.

 _So it's Cass, now, huh?,_ she remembered saying, while accepting the proffered tin.

The courier had recoiled as if Cass' hands were on fire, much to the redhead's amusement. _It sounded nice,_ the courier meekly explained, and Cass laughed ever harder, especially after she saw the blush spreading across the woman's cheeks.

_Don't stop now, I've kinda gotten used to a pretty lady callin' me every now and then._

Cass thought she'd rendered the courier speechless, more so than usual, so she dug her spoon into the slimy brown paste till she heard the woman's gruff voice again.

_Are you coming on to me?_

_Fuck, wait... I mean, n-no. No._

_If you say so._

Of course, the blasted grin on the woman's face said plenty about how she didn't believe her, but _thank_ the _fucking_ heavens the courier never made a habit of asking Cass about her past. Lord knew the blush on her cheeks that would never fade if the courier found out that all it took was enough booze in her system before she wouldn't give a damn about who she slept with.

_Well, what can I call you? Ain't fair of you to hog pet names to yourself - heck, I barely know yours._

_Six._

_Makes you sound like a creepy robot. No, what's your name?_

_You can't pronounce it. Trust me._

_Oh, for fuck's sake - woman, please?_

_Eola. Eola Nakamichi._

She'd heard of them - the people across the sea, the people who'd rained the A-bombs on her beloved country. The people Papa Cassidy read to her from a tattered Pre-War book, years before he walked to the East and out of her life one night.

_Chinese?_

Six snorted, a harsh sound that bounced off the sand and rocks they sat on.

_Japanese. We don't have nukes like them._

But it didn't matter, innit? Japanese, Chinese, American, British - meaningless terms and demographics that didn't outlive the bombs.

_Y'know what, I'll stick to Six._

_Told you so. I tried, alright? Can't fault a girl for it._

Cass knew the courier needed some shut-eye, with how weariness was etched all over her face, so Cass offered to keep watch. Her shotgun needed some cleaning from the raiders who'd _insisted_ on riddling them with lead that morning, so why the heck not? She'd just wake Six up when she got all droopy-eyed.

But Cass was the one who had some rack time in the end, because Six resolutely shook her head when Cass popped the question. Granted, the courier _did_ shake her awake when the dust storms had long died down, and the cazadors and geckos had started to wander the dunes in what Cass could only guess was a few hours till dawn.

She couldn't figure out how Six managed it, staying awake most of the night with her rifle in her lap and seeing through those beaten-up glasses of hers. Maybe that was why Six always wore her field cap the right way round only during the day, with the rim catching shadows that covered her eyes. Other times, it was slung backwards with the rim covering her neck in a decidedly un-militaristic manner - looking awfully like the junkies strewn all over Freeside.

How glasses led to hypersensitive eyes that took offense at too much light, Cass really didn't know. What she did know, was the crushed butt of a cigarette half-buried in the sands near the rock the courier had perched on throughout the night. That dainty little fucker could light her smokes anytime, Cass really didn't give a shit, but she couldn't ignore the little rush of gratitude as her boot heels crushed the stub deeper into the ground.

It wasn't everyday when someone bothered listening to the words of a drunkard.

* * *

Novac was a nice enough town, but the huge green lizard scared the shit out of her, much to the the courier's chagrin.

_Just a green dinosaur, Cass. Plastic and all._

It was there when Six's face showed something other than a hesitant smile and a blank gaze, and Cass was quick to realise what had gotten to her.

She'd only heard snippets and broken recollections of the red berets in the NCR. Some hailed them as the next coming, some wrote them off as heartless fucks. But being with Six, reputation or not, Cass just saw another person - struggling and broken in more ways than one. She knew the feeling all too well, of hidden scars and jagged faultlines within that never seemed to show. And when they did, they swallowed you whole and you could barely breathe.

 _Boone,_ she remembered the courier saying - hesitantly at first - before the woman ran off to the figure in the distance. Meanwhile, Cass had noticed the crumbling neon signs around her, knew that it was a cute little motel they were running into, and she didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Do people go on fun holidays anymore? Like sure, let's visit the madmen across the Colorado and explore a Vault somewhere down the line. Really, ghouls _don't_ exist and Caeser's Legion are _just_ misunderstood tribals.

Cass got the willies the longer she sat at the table, together with the First Recon buddies sharing a drink over what had to be more than a simple catch-up between war buddies. They used to be a pair apparently - Six the spotter while Boone pulled the trigger, until they had to teach the greenhorns. Separated recently after some tour too, if she'd heard right. But over what, Cass didn't know, because she'd already taken hurried steps into the crisp air of the Mojave morning.

Being a third wheel had _never_ been fucking fun to begin with, and she'd seen enough hookups around the wastes to know that they never lasted. Cass knew plenty with her years hinging on forty, but she couldn't explain the sudden _twinge_ in her chest, jarring like the creeping cold in her fingers when she relinquished her grip on the doorknob of Boone's motel room. Probably the weather, she surmised.

Deep down though, part of her remembered the time when she woke up to the sound of her mother sobbing in the dead of the night. And when she saw the look on her mother's face in their run-down kitchen, she knew she'd never sleep right, or see her Da ever again.

Cass told herself the alcohol could do magic with her memory, but as she palmed a cold beer in a canvas tent just down the road, she wasn't so sure anymore.

* * *

_I remember now. He taught me how to shoot._

_You must've been proud of your Da._

_I was, still am. Just wished my Ma was._

_Didn't he earn the caps?_

_Yeah, but she didn't like Da in the army. Said he'd get killed one day._

* * *

She didn't expect the _thing_ Six had going on to be awfully contagious, but after she tried making small talk with the sniper with shades, she'd rather strangle a deathclaw with her bare hands.

Were all First Recon grunts dumb mutes, with mouths that were too heavy like two dying Brahmin females slapped together on a sunny day in the Mojave?

Cass realised a little late that she'd blurted that out loud 'cause Six laughed softly, telling Cass that she hadn't seen the loudmouths in her former unit yet.

_Praise the Lord, the world hasn't gone cuckoo yet._

_They always died first, I'd have you know._

Cass knew she shared a smile with Six, but Boone? He continued doing what he always did, wrapped in his silence and keeping his eyes peeled for lord-knew-what. He never said much, anyway.

Cass supposed she shouldn't have been surprised when Six asked her to lay off the pressure on Boone, in a wrecked trailer with the 188 just over the horizon. He'd left to take a piss, while Cass found herself admiring the stars hanging over the Mojave, her arms draped on the frame of the trailer's glassless window.

_He needs his space._

_You mean you don't?_

_Don't tell me your hands ain't covered in blood._

_They are, but I...I can cope. Him? Not anymore._

_That one story we'd all hate to tell anyone about?_

_Yeah._

Somehow, Cass knew it had something to do with the ornery Crawford woman disappearing the other night without so much as a squeak. That night, Six's lips were set in a thin line between her cheeks, eyes scanning a sheaf of yellowing paper that the Legion _loved_ to use, before bolting out into the night. Cass knew the courier well enough to realise the torrent roiling beneath her countenance, evident in the tense line of her shoulders and her gray irises that had darkened to a faint shade of lavender. But like most things went, Cass didn't have the nerve to pry.

Did Six have plenty of other secrets hidden behind that blasted emotional wall of hers? It was always _questions_ around the courier, and _never_ answers.

Such musings took up much of Cass' thoughts as she laid with her arms tucked under her head on featherless mattresses, hearing Six's steady breathing a few paces away from her. She couldn't hear Boone from where he sat beside the door of the trailer, not like she could hear him at all anyway. Still and rigid like morning wood, but that was how he remained, until the rays of dawn shook her awake.

It took her a few tinfuls of hot, gritty coffee scalding her tongue before it struck her that she'd never seen the courier sleep as soundly, at least until Boone came along for the ride.

* * *

Normally, Six was always silent, silent to the point of being a _pain_ in the ass, because when Cass didn't get to verbally spar with someone, something, _anything_ , she'd end up really _bored_. And then, emptied glass bottles would pile up real quick in her pack - but the courier would always snatch away those bottles from her greedy lips with that _annoyingly_ bemused smile. Sometimes, she'd drink them too, and the next time Cass' lips come away from the rim of her bottles, she would taste the smokey tang of tar beneath the warmness of whiskey.

But Six had a way with rifles - how her wiry fingers curled against the mahogany stock, how her steady breathing would still in a few moments, how her neck curved at an angle as she sought to align her target between the false sights of her rifle tip. Silence would bear down on those around her, before a crack - and the distinct shape in the distance would fall like a marionette who had its strings cut. Then, she'd always flash that lopsided smirk of hers, and Cass swore she'd never seen anything more _stunning_ in that moment.

Six needed a friend, Cass tried telling herself, when day had given way to night. Hadn't it been obvious when that blighter had walked through the Outpost's goddamn door?

And then, Cass' gaze would fall on Six who'd give her a gentle grin in return, face brightened from the flickering light of the campfire.

Oh well, Cass thought, shit like this didn't need more encouragement, as she felt the burn of whiskey on her tongue. Ain't got time to wear her mind down with meaningless _feelings_ when there was always a nice bottle to empty.

Fuck Six, and her eyes that spoke more than what her mouth refused to say.

* * *

_How did we meet?_

_Was havin' fun with my whiskey all by myself back at the Outpost, until you planted your sorry arse on a seat near mine._

_I did?_

_Guessed as much. A bit of Absinthe and you get all ballsy._

_Was I always like that? Quiet, I mean._

_Yeah, 'cause you're one tough nut to crack for secrets. Felt like banging my head against the wall sometimes._

_At least I'm still me, I think._

* * *

She remembered the wreckage, broken crates and deadbeat Brahmin strewn all over the potholed driveway like the post-party mess of a drunkard. It felt surreal to her, seeing her life's work in dust, as the coarse grains slid through her fingers. It wasn't hers, but it was still one of her people, and that's all that mattered.

That's what she kept telling herself, but even she couldn't tell the sinking feeling to fuck off, when her beloved caravans were scattered splinters lying in the dirt. She knew the Van Graffs did this, what with those assheads parading their laser rifles like it made them invincible. Nothing was more telling than piles of ash instead of bullet-riddled bodies. The McLafferty bitch probably had something to do with this too, because the letter she received a while back wasn't the first.

But they couldn't blunt the biting feeling of defeat, the loss she'd tried to fill with stiff drinks, because the bottles that numbed her senses were _just_ bottles, and she couldn't help but hear the stitches over her frayed emotions snap piece by piece.

She remembered that she didn't have any snark to offer at the very end, just resigned silence and the nagging itch to feel the sting of whiskey in her throat. It wasn't much comfort seeing the bodies of Van Graff and Crimson Caravan bodyguards around Dunn's caravan, because they were just details; things that confirmed her hunches, and it wasn't enough to bring back her business.

_I'm sorry, Cass._

_Don't be. 's not your fault, anyway._

There was nothing left to look at but mounds of ash, coating broken planks and decaying meat like flies on honey. Both of which were starting to irritate her senses.

She'd walked away without so much as a second glance, but she didn't count on a warm hand squeezing her shoulder. She didn't - no, _couldn't_ say it in that point in time with the noose of something tight around her throat, so she gave Six a tight smile instead.

 _No problem_ , Six had whispered back, as if the woman heard the unspoken thanks that refused to fall from Cass' lips.

* * *

_My pistol holster's empty._

_You used to carry 'round this pistol from New Canaan._

_Zion Valley?_

_Yeah, you said one of the locals gave it to you._

_Why would I be there?_

_No bloody idea. You never liked tellin' me your lifestory then._

_I think he took it. The pretty boy. Doc gave me everything that Securitron found._

_Don't pout, you'll get it back. After you beat him senseless, right?_

* * *

She found Six outside with a lit cigarette between her lips, the little swirls of smoke scratching against the sensitive lining of Cass' nostrils.

Cass always had a knack for smell, sharp enough to pick out the little fragments that painted pictures of the figures that flitted through her life. Then again, she wasn't in a hurry to inform Boone that he smelt of wet dog, slimy and disgusting like the irradiated stench that clung on to Santangelo after the scribe slipped into a gunk pool of irradiated water. Even the Brahmin shit Cass had shovelled once didn't seem half-bad, heck, maybe it even _tasted_ better.

Sure, Sharon Cassidy was one _mean_ bitch, but she wasn't stupid. Lord knew when the fucked-up psycho army boy would flip, and with her frail heart and alcoholic's liver, she _perfectly_ understood the value of life. She wasn't about to run her mouth in front of Six though, with how the woman was so protective of _darling_ Craig.

Six greeted her with a simple _hey_ , before crushing her smoking stub of a cigarette under a booted feet.

_I'm fine with you and your cancer sticks when I'm around. Don't waste them, ya hear?_

_The smoke'll kill your heart. Besides, they're everywhere - lockers, desks, boxes._

_You know about it? Hmph, should've guessed. Goddamn four-eyes and their glasses._

_Shakes aren't hard to miss, Cass._

She thought she had a good idea on what had happened back at the Tops, 'cause when Six returned just as the sun dipped below the horizon, she had that little skip in her step and a sly smirk to boot. When that happened, Six was either happily drunk, or _pleased_. Not the blissful glee of the ignorant, oh no, but the feral grin of a nightstalker who had your neck between its jaws.

Even more telling was the grimy, yet recognizable pistol that now hung in Six's leg holster.

_I think I'm in over my head, Cass._

Six offered her a bottle of sarsaparilla then, white froth fizzing gently in long lines dripping down the neck of the bottle.

 _Nah,_ Cass had replied with a gentle shake of her head. _Can't drink anythin' but water tonight, or Gannon'll throw a fit. He's prickly 'bout my liver like that._

_So, Gannon's your new mam?_

_Lord forbid. I'd rather stop drinkin' my whiskey._

As fast as Six pulled out a wisecrack, a dark look crossed her face equally quickly, much to Cass' frustration. That lady deserved her happy, kooky feelings, with the shit in her life that's been piled all over her.

_Don't know if I'll always do the right thing, Cass._

_Nonsense. Seems to me tha' your moral compass' always skewed in one direction._

_You think so?_

_I know you will. Ain't ya the biggest girl scout in the whole of the Mojave?_

_I don't know._

_There you go again with the moping. Tell me 'bout your old pal Benny instead. Don't want anyone thinkin' you fell into a radioactive puddle like Santangelo when you start to grow white hair._

_Cass, you're teasing someone with a power fist._

_So? I've got a shotgun._

_Well, Miss Cassidy, it's not with you now, isn't that right?_

_Whoa, hey Ronnie, I think your fists are getting too close to my pretty face, could you-FUCK_

Later, in the dark of a tent, Cass supposed the bruises would hurt next morning, since Santangelo packed one heck of a punch, even if it was in jest. She'd only needed to think back on the battered forms of the Freeside thugs that stood between them and the Strip a couple o' nights ago, when those fists were wrapped in fancy hydraulics that wheezed.

Then again, the sore bumps didn't really matter, as Cass traced a finger along those blue indents that littered her scratchy skin. She was a hardened woman, not a smooth-skinned babe no more. Santangelo was snoring noisily nearby, the woman curled into a ball on a worn-out mattress that had definitely seen better days. Cass had to _remind_ herself that Six was snoozing on top in that next bunk too, 'cause this time, she couldn't hear the gentle breathing that characterised the woman's slumber.

She wondered if she'd preferred it any other way, where she didn't waste away in the Outpost surrounded by bottles of whiskey, where she didn't decide to hang around the bar waiting for the pasty-faced Major to fix the bores of her shotgun. She'd always been on her feet, never found a place that she could call home, but in the darkness of the Old Mormon Fort, hours past the turn of midnight, she thought it ain't _that_ bad for now.

She'd never, _ever_ let such thoughts slip, but it felt nice, havin' someone watching her back even if she stumbled along the way.

* * *

She discovered white pills bouncing about inside a grimy bottle in the folds of her pack, when she reached in for her secret flask of whiskey that didn't reek of the courier's tar-tinged lips. Six was a nice woman, sure, but Cass didn't like the rims of her whiskey bottles tasting funny.

They were five days out from Freeside, on a straight vector to a bunch of crazy tribals at Nellis, because some NCR fancypants wanted Six to convince them to join 'em. Cass knew the hypocrisy behind her words, being tribal herself, but at least she wasn't likely to go all trigger-happy and pepper people who came within an arm's length of her with nice, round holes - if they weren't blown to bits in the first place.

 _Aspirin_ , the label screamed at her in a cramped scrawl that barely resembled letters.

She rolled the rattling bottle between her wiry fingers, seeing how the light played off the mentat-lookalikes with detached amusement. She figured she should be seething, _furious_ at Six going through her things, but she wasn't. Part of her wanted to strangle that mute to within an inch of her life, but another was silently grateful.

She had never been good at asking for help to begin with.

* * *

She didn't know how Six managed it, but somehow, Six did. The stars had to screw up so _catastrophically_ to get the unlikeliest bunch of people across the Mojave together.

She imagined how it would sound like, and here it went: A Brotherhood Scribe, a Followers Doctor and a Tribal walk into a bar - just like the beginnings of a bad joke. It didn't help that they were in one, in the ruined suburbs of New Vegas, but the Garret twins served vintages, and that was all that mattered.

She'd tried telling it to Boone, but all she got was a noncommittal grunt. She tried telling it to Gannon and Santangelo, but they'd told her to shut up. That they did, 'cause they were so _damned_ excited about taking Boone to the Strip.

Dragging, more like, seeing the cute little frown on Boone's ashen face.

By then, she couldn't really see the little bear on the top of Six's battered cap no more, it being a little brown blob against gray. Or even count her fingers, for that matter.

Five cups later, she realised that she didn't really give a flying fuck anymore, with the feel-good screwing with her mind and the liquid thick in her veins. All the rage and hurt and despair blown out of her system like what that neat little plastic bomb did to Crimson Caravan's main office - with that bitch inside, of course. That's how they fucked the Van Graffs over too, chucking grenades into their godforsaken store and hearing the pyrotechnics of exploding plasma from the outside. If that was how a choir of angels sounded like, she'd gladly take up the theological Brahmin crap of the New Canaanites.

_Cass, you thinking of leaving?_

_What makes ya think so?_

_You got back at those who screwed you over. No reason to stay anymore._

_Nah, lot of weird shit happened after I threw myself in with your lot. Never been so fuckin' amused._

_Heh, thanks. I'm glad._

She remembered babbling like an incoherent fool, the words tripping all over each other in jumbled phrases and jarring sentences. Time held no meaning to her, because she couldn't sense the shifts in the current: one moment she sensed Boone and the others at the table, and in another they're gone. Just her and Six, but _boy_ was she no fun, 'cause she was pulling a long face again.

Cass tried counting again - five, six, seven? She knew the more bottles she drank, the more she was likely to say something embarrassing. Plus, with Six around, it _definitely_ wouldn't end well, but Cass knew that this ridiculous jaunt round the Mojave wouldn't too.

_Cass, you sure about drinking this much?_

_Hey, they ain't call me Whiskey Rose back West for nothin'._

Eight, nine..five? and she knew she was beyond _smashed_ , because the little brown blob had vanished in the mass of gray. Heck, she couldn't even _see_ her bottle.

_Hey Six? Ever been told you're one heck of a lady?_

_No, why?_

_You are, and I really like you for it._

_You sure that isn't the whiskey talking?_

_Hell no. Don't lie when I'm overflowing with them spirits. Hey, Six? Come back to my bed? Bet I could wipe away the ugly frown on ya pretty face._

_You're serious._

_I told ya I don't lie, didn't I? Damned drinks make it hard t' lie._

_That's it. You've had too much._

Strong arms quickly hauled she up before she could scrabble for a glass bottle to hold. Cass barely registered the sensation of deja vu as her jellied legs slid up the creaking stairs, but this time, it wasn't a drink in the depths, for which she was one happy motherfucker.

_You are? Caeser's balls, I never thought you'd say yes._

_I'm flattered, Cass, but you're drunk._

_Aw, Six, you're such a spoilsport. No way to treat a girl like this._

_You deserve better, Cass._

* * *

Cass knew she woke up like she did the last, under tattered duvets and with a fucking migraine bad enough to make her toes curl.

Just that this time, Six was slumped over in a rickety excuse of a chair beside the bed, head lolling about in sleep. She remembered making the sheets rustle, just a bit, but enough for Six to jerk awake, hat slightly askew. The woman blinked like a newborn babe, trying to shrug off the sleep that obviously hadn't come easily to her.

_I ain't do anything stupid, right? Ain't shot sexist fuckers or sleazy dickheads while drunk? Or say anything I might regret?_

_Nothing happened, Cass. Just had to drag you back up here._

_Eh, thanks. Hope I was a good girl on my drinks. Hate to dirty your favourite hat._

Cass didn't realise it at first, but she eventually noticed the gentle rise and fall of Six's chest when the woman failed to reply. Six wasn't an airhead, she knew her job, and did it _well_ \- even staved off sleep if she had to. What could've worn the woman out so badly?

Of course, that was until the sledgehammer blow rocked Cass' brains, making Cass flop back on soft sheets, fingers kneading her forehead. It came in flashes and snippets, but memories of yesterday came back all the same.

Six thought yesterday was the rambles of a wash-out, Cass figured - _insisted_ even - but it didn't stop the nagging feeling of horror from smothering her relief. Cass got sloshed the same way every other wastelander in the Mojave did - the babbling, the slurring, the fucked up vision. But a lifetime of hard drinks _did_ do something for her. Cass threw tempers, mouthed off more than usual, but she remembered everything, haze or not - especially the words that had slid out so _traitorously_ from her chapped lips.

Even a cold shower couldn't wash away the stinging realisation that Six never did say _no_.

Cass didn't know what to make of it.

* * *

_Fuck._

_What, radroaches crawlin' all over your feet?_

_I can't remember everything._

_Quit worryin'. Ain't gonna do much for ya._

_They look at me like I'm supposed to know them._

_Hey, we'll find another way out of McCarran. Somewhere quieter, with less people._

* * *

Too much of their time had been spent trekking the wastes, because Six and her motley gang of misfits had been hailed as the next fucking coming by the higher-ups in the NCR, and Cass was _beyond_ amused.

Santangelo had been sticking around Six more so than usual these days, and Cass knew something else was up. Gannon had noticed that too, telling her in sagely undertones that Ronnie _probably_ had a _raging_ crush on Six while the two in question walked on ahead, oblivious to the current exchange.

Honestly, Cass thought nothing of it, and in fact welcomed it with a drawn-out sigh of relief. She needed reasons to stop thinking of Six _that way_ , so why not let poor old Ronnie have her way instead?

Six needed a friend, Cass insisted to herself. Why change that when that woman _obviously_ needed the stability?

Gannon's snickering with me, innit? Not at me, 'cause Boone's _not_ laughing at all.

Thinking back, Cass kept telling herself that the sly smile on Gannon's pale face had _nothing_ to do with the little frown on hers.

* * *

She thought she'd seen it all, until Six decided to bring them on a lovely jaunt to Vault 22, because of some stuck-up Doc and sweet, sad ol' Ronnie with her quest to reform the Brotherhood.

Years traversing the dust and sand of the West Coast had shoved all sorts of critters and animals in her face, be it the deathclaws or nightstalkers that lurked beneath the shadows of rocky outcrops. She used to think that the deathclaws were the worst of the lot, but she didn't know she would be facing the horror of the underground like a girl being fucked for the first time.  

Cass liked vegetables, always picking up the odd ear or two of maize whenever they stopped by some deadbeat town like a good girl. Her mam brought her up right in the wastes, and she wasn't going to forget those habits anytime soon. 'twas the only memories she'd wanted to recall fondly anyway, on days when even the harsh sting of alcohol couldn't deaden the yearning for company.

After what she saw in the Vault, she wasn't so sure anymore.

She could still picture the things clambering towards 'em on their limbs - _vines?_ \- with murder in their beady eyes and the promise of death on their icky wet lips. They didn't get that close though, between Six's pistol, Gannon's plasma gun and Santangelo's vicious fists. Wasn't that much of a stretch to guess that her companions had never set foot in these godforsaken places before too, where Vaults were just airy-fairy stories from Pre-War books to them.

Why else would Gannon be slack-jawed at the _'scientific value of the experiments'_ like a chem junkie? Hearing him prattle in that nasal voice of his, Cass wanted nothing more than to claw off her ears, if it meant that she'd stop his babbling from ringing in her ears.

Of course, only after _hours_ of walking in circles did they finally find the Doc's assistant. Even then, to get to her, they had to cut through a horde of revolting bugs that Cass _refused_ to name. Green fuckers that were hammered into a pulp weren't supposed to rise from the dead, for fuck's sake.

Still, after the hurried swig of whiskey, her heart still thumped in her chest like a pair of corralled bighorners. Before, the slimy, green twine had wrapped itself around her neck, slowly squeezing the life out of her lungs, before the bang of a revolver tore through her eardrums and she could breathe easy again.

She'd waved away Santangelo's profuse apologies because she never believed in those anyway, not that she told the scribe that. It would've killed the nice party mood they had going. Yeah, 'cause Gannon and Santangelo bickered and bantered endlessly: something that Cass was grateful to hear. Anything to think about but the itch around her neck.

Only after Santangelo downloaded the blasted farming tech into her Pip-Boy did Cass let out a strained breath, 'cause it meant that they'd be out of this shithole, _pronto_.

_You alright there?_

_Yeah, absolutely fantastic._

_It's amusing to see plants nibbling away at you instead._

_Ain't funny, Six._

When they stopped by some town a few miles south of that place, Cass bought cans of Pork 'n Beans instead. Irradiated and disgusting processed slop, but less likely to throttle her in her sleep.

The next time she dared touch a cob of maize was when they littered the ash-ridden fields of the Legate's camp, like the discoloured spots on the potato sack Ronnie called 'her clothes'.

* * *

Cass realised by then that Six had her moments of lyrical brilliance, a contrast to her earlier fucked-up attempts at sweet-talking the raiders that always got in their way. Sure, one less problem running amok in the Mojave, but she still felt some unexplainable kinship with those tribals. Not only that, Cass wanted to bury herself six-feet under whenever Six tried out her cringe-worthy lines. Even ghouls sang better, and so were Hadrian's jokes.

Cass thought her time was up, that day when all of them walked out of the tincan's bunker with a sullen Santangelo on their heels. Ronnie was a wild child, chock-full of her flowery ideas and belief about 'setting things right'. Cass admired that shining beacon of hope Ronnie stubbornly kept aflame, but she simply waited for the other boot to drop, and drop it did with a crater in the fucking ground, cause sad ol' Ronnie broke down when she couldn't decide if she wanted to stay or scram from her piss-poor Brotherhood. It didn't help when a bunch of Brotherhood bucketheads decided to mouth off at them at the door.

Cass wasn't familiar with Pre-War greeting ethics, but that was just _rude_.

Took a shot at Ronnie, too, deriding her 'subversive ideas' they thought were influencing that Elder back in the bunker. That Cass could tolerate, until those uncouth bastards began to ridicule Six, making her hackles rise.

A soft whistle and a subtle shake of Boone's head, and Cass reluctantly dragged her hand away from her holstered shotgun.

She supposed that Six had finally put her military background to good use, with enough steel and bite in her words to stave off a platoon of paladins in power armour. The tension was palpable then, thick enough for Cass to slice it with her knife.

And just like that, the paladins leave, one shoving Six with an armor-clad shoulder that made her wobble slightly on her feet. Gannon went over to her with a searching gaze, but Boone beat him to it, picking up a black slip of cloth off the ground - the thing Six used to cover her mangled eye.

As Cass laid a hand on Santangelo's shoulder, the latter staying deathly still, Cass swore she saw Six deliberately looking away until that little loop of cloth was tied round her head once more.

* * *

Santangelo had a midlife crisis after that, insides _screaming_ 'cause she couldn't do nothin' about the Brotherhood's decision to wait and die out in a hole.

That day, all it had taken was a pretty smile and little pout, and Cass' stubbornness melted away. She ain't wanted to go, her bed was _too fuckin' wonderful_ , but Gannon had the cramps. Served him right, she thought. Told him the roast squirrels looked too gooey to be fresh, but he ate it anyway, even when the Wrangler's chop shop had that and something... _cleaner_.

 _I'm a doctor, Cass, I know these things_ , he'd insisted. Well, good to _fuckin'_ know, but someone's shooting shit out of his arsehole this morning. Blockheaded angsty _man-boys._

Six did encourage Santangelo, saying that she should listen to her heart and all those fortune cookie crap. Took Ronnie a while, but the scribe made up her mind eventually, blurting it out during card night with her mouth stuffed with Fancy Lad Cakes.

That could be the _only_ comprehensible reason as to why Cass had to chaperone two ladies in the fucking morning and get thoroughly coated in dust and sweat before noon. Cass grumbled and dragged her feet, but she still went along 'cause Santangelo did need the distraction. This job allowed Santangelo time away from the clusterfuck of the wastes, and something good to cling on to.

The scribe had been yammerin' endlessly like a junkie on a Jet-induced high during the walk there, blabbering about everything and anything about the Followers, excited and so _blissfully_ happy. As if she wasn't a Brotherhood pariah, as if her Da and Mam were still breathing, as if her only remaining mentor and friend hadn't took off like what Papa Cassidy did.

Six just nodded encouragingly at the scribe’s words, with a ghost of a smile on her face.

Everything was fine and dandy, but Ronnie was still a person, broken and chipped in places. Bubbly, little ray of sunshine she remained, until Cass spotted smoke in the clouds and smelt ash in the air, and Santangelo said no more. The redhead took two steps at a time, up the rickety wooden stairs that creaked and squirmed like the sinking feeling in her chest. Santangelo was right behind her, and it was the scribe's shaky breaths she heard in place of the words from before when her hands twisted the bronzed doorknob leading to the quaint office shack.

Cass snorted derisively, seeing her caravan brought back from the dead through the cinders and fumes of what used to be a shelter for the champion of the downtrodden, the sick, the damned. _Click-click_ , she heard, the deeper they walked into the wrecked office. She'd heard that all her life, the mechanical sound of both death and salvation, and she didn't rush for her gun, not when five smokin' barrels were thrust in their faces.

_Oh no, no no no no._

There was something _raw_ in Santangelo's denial, like a crack in a glass that showed no matter how hard one tried to hide it. Cass would've done something, if only to feel useful in that moment, but the helmeted figure beyond the doorway rasped hateful words and righteous anger first beneath black tinted lenses and drab voice modulators.

 _In the name of the Elder, I sentence you to death,_ Cass heard with a certain finality, and the beads of sweat finally dripped down the sides of her face. In one moment, she flung herself on the scribe, towards the floor and away from the open door, and in another, the shack rocked on its stilts, dust and ash mixing with cinders flying everywhere, draping itself on her and everything else like a silken shroud.

Cass laid sprawled over the trembling form of the scribe, shushing Santangelo because _the tincans could still be alive next door and there was no fucking need to tip 'em off just yet._  With a crick in her neck, Cass looked up from dust-coated floorboards to see Six crouched on the other side of the doorframe with her head in her hands. Fingers in her ears too, if Cass saw right.

She hastened to her feet when she ain't heard nothin' for a while, gingerly brushing away the sticky dust - was that _blood?_ \- on her jeans after Ronnie wasn't wobbling unsteadily on both feet. Her boots brushed against a metal grenade pin buried under wood splinters and grime, but she forgot about it when she peeked into the room that used to hold bunk beds and snoozing Followers. If anyone else took a gander at the sight, she wouldn't blame 'em for just seeing the mishmash of charred flesh and hunks of blackened metal - but she jerked her head away and back towards the office when the bile in her throat made her want to gag.

_You didn't have to do it._

_Do what, Six?_

_Not use grenades when I'm around. I'm thirty-five, not five._

Six had a filthy arm draped around Santangelo's shoulder, when she leveled another of those infuriating looks that Cass supposed had some meaning - which Cass couldn't seem to figure out for the life of her. At least the glance was marred with annoyance now, a variation that Cass gladly noticed. Aside from how the scribe's face was as white as a sheet.

_I don’t get you._

_Forget it. Let's go._

Santangelo started off soft and almost childlike, the moment they had a few miles between them and the heap of zinc and wood that meant little to anyone anymore.

The scribe mumbled a few halting words at the beginning, but once she let the words flow, she didn't stop. That was Cass' cue to quicken her pace, letting Six deal with the scribe with whatever pep talk she definitely had off the tips of her fingers. A former caravan merchant was better off shooting things anyway.

 _Heart-to-heart talks,_ Six'd called 'em, because the wasteland fucked people in a whole shitload of ways till they never turned out the same ever again. And sometimes, words were the glue that held those jagged pieces together.

 _Load of poppycock,_ she'd told Six then, but the woman simply smiled back, like she always did.

* * *

_There's another scar._

_I ain't wanna pry, but they're probably from your NCR days._

_I don't know, Cass. It doesn't feel right._

_Don't worry 'bout it. Some people have a kink for scars._

_Shut up._

_Hey, don't bother hidin' that grin, Six._

_What's it to you?_

_Scars tell you that you survived, no matter what the wasteland throws at ya._

* * *

Cass realised she'd never seen Six go down in a fight, since Six always hung out with Boone at the back, with Cass and Santangelo leading the charge. Gannon? He just went wherever he fancied, though she remembered yanking his ears for disappearing the time they had to kill a deathclaw that had lumbered a wee bit too close.

Turned out he was _takin' a piss._ With _deathclaws_ nearby. So much for being a learned man, she reckoned.

She'd always thought well about Six's ability to stay out of trouble, until they found themselves running around an irradiated town down south. It definitely didn't top her to-do list, because Cass hated anything green, ever since the Vault incident. Mutated plants were one thing, and glowing green ghouls were just an extension of that fucked-up family tree.

Ever since Six had been courted by the powers-that-be, Six had made it a point to drop by every single NCR camp to help out like the girl scout she was. 'twas fine by Cass, since NCR was her lot, bunch of assholes or no. Even if they didn't pay well, not like they could in the first place, it felt nice, doing good again. She knew all too well the listlessness that used to fill her bones, like the whiskey that swirled in her veins and stubbornly clung on like rad stains.

They went through the town with the sun beating down on them, so Boone and Six could nail 'em ghouls before those zombies heard their footsteps on tarmac roads. The most Cass had to do was to pass Boone the finicky dogtags she nicked from the dead ghouls, _and_ tolerate Santanlego's constant quips about melting inside her power suit. One day, Cass was going to find the mute button on that _goddamn_ can-suit, bruises from a scribe be damned. _Fine_ , maybe she had to stop binging on strong whiskey too, and listen to Six for that matter. It was mucking about with her emotions.

Exploring the irradiated town wasn't always a milk run though, especially when they were fumbling around in the dark interior of the fire station. Six took point, pistol at the ready, the light of her Pip-Boy illuminating the shadowed angles of the walls. But all of 'em ain't heard it coming, the abomination that poked out from a corner like a nosy neighbour. That was the thing about glowing ones - they hardly made a sound, and a split-second was all that fuckbag needed before it exploded, spewing its disgusting green filth everywhere.

Cass couldn't remember much of what happened after, only that she had to half-drag, half-carry a groaning Six back to the quaint little camp on the town's outskirts. The ghoul slosh had burned through Six's jacket, its metallic tang rubbing Cass the wrong way but Cass simply scrunched her nose and doggedly plodded out of the blasted town, suppressing a cough from her rad-filled lungs. In her haze of worry, she didn't register Gannon and Santangelo staving off the ghouls from the station that clung on to them like cazadors, or Boone handing over the dogtags to the sullen ranger.

All she cared about was the woman stifling pained hisses beside her, hanging on to Cass' shoulder like it was her only lifeline.

**

_The ghoul spit fucked up your eyepatch and your shirt, Six._

_I know, I know. I can handle myself._

_You sure you ain't need help puttin' a fresh shirt on? Those rad burns look nasty._

_I'm fine, Cass. Done this before._

Cass let the flap flop closed, affording Six some privacy that wasn't common in these parts. Six was obstinate as hell, yeah, but Six's irritation had seemingly popped out of nowhere.

_Keep this up, and you'll reclaim your spot at Goodspring's cemetery, eh?_

Cass stopped at the words that she almost missed, her ears perked by the accusation ringing in the air.

_Pretty-boy blew out your memory, robot doctors carved out chunks of your chest, Great Khan grenades redecorating your face?_

Cass knew she shouldn't listen, shouldn't intrude on something so damned _personal_ , but her legs refused to budge. _Baby steps,_ she told herself as she inched closer to the campfire, where the guffaws and general sounds of conversation got louder with every inch.

_One day, you'll just get someone killed, again, when it should've been you._

Cass barely tore herself away from the shitstorm she knew was about to blow, releasing a deep sigh when she reached the firelight. She ignored the smirk Gannon sent her way, choosing to give Boone a little shake of her head when he leveled her with a questioning look - Lord, when had she become so adept at deciphering his expressions? Anyway, she didn't think Six had it in her, the nagging doubts and raging insecurity, not when her entire frame radiated confidence and barrel-loads of self-belief - Six was the new _poster girl_ for the fucking NCR, damn it.

Usually, what Six didn't say became what she'd do instead. Six didn't question the ranger back at Nelson, but Cass had walked the streets with Santangelo then without having to fire her scattergun at all. She remembered the death-like quiet, broken only by the occasional gunshot and the Legion corpses everywhere, a single hole in their helmeted heads. _You were bait,_ Six casually mentioned when they stood over Dead-Sea's unmoving form, _so Boone and I could nail them one by one._ Who wouldn't see the self-assured blighter, then?

Moments later, Six appeared in a crumpled button-down shirt a size too big for her slim frame. She didn't say much after she plopped down beside Cass, other than asking for the occasional sip of Moonshine making its rounds round the campfire, but the customary smirk soon made its way to her face, as if what Cass heard in the tent didn't happen at all. Briefly, Cass wondered if Six's scathing monologue meant more than the hairline scars she saw on Six's exposed skin, when green slime lined the fraying edges of the woman's burnt jacket.

_Veronica, a stick of that, please._

Cass didn't understand. Weren't scars like marks of honour? 'cause when the wasteland fucked you over, they reminded you that you _survived_ , and came out better.

_Here. I saved you the juicy ones. Thanks._

Maybe 'twas just a discussion for another day, Cass thought. Leave the psychobabble and theological mumbo-jumbo to the white coat docs.

Gannon mumbled something to her after, his prim undertones shadowed by the excitement in his eyes. Cass remembered choking on her water - she swore it could've been due to the _stench_ of the Brahmin shit Gannon was spewing - before giving him the best stink-eye she could muster between fits of coughing.

_So, Cass, you seem awfully distracted today._

_Go fuck yourself, professor. With a switchblade._

* * *

Of _course_ they had to get involved in the clusterfuck of the Four Families. It was _so_ normal, 'cause everyone _loved_ to poke cattleprods in the shady affairs of the big people in Vegas. Trust the NCR to get mired in a pool of crazy just to get the things they wanted. Too eager to stick their grubby hands everywhere in America, rather than throw caps to the locals who obviously needed 'em.

Then again, most of the higher-ups came from Shady Sands, too blind to see beyond the mounds of caps they were rolling around in like mole rats. Funnily enough, Six came from that blasted town, and _she_ didn't look like she had enough caps to rub together.

Eh, not like Cass was going to badmouth her country in front of Moore, even if she wasn't an army grunt. She liked her skin unblemished and free of bruises, especially after what Santangelo did.

Still, the NCR was strung up, way tighter than Mr House's grip over the Strip, she thought as she shadowed Six's footsteps alongside Santangelo in Gomorrah. She wondered why Six didn't bring along the males of their merry band, since they had the muscles for a good brawl if things went to hell. Probably had somethin' to do with the jiggling tits and asses everywhere, men and their hyperactive imagination and libido. No surprise there, seeing all of them patrons visibly reeled in like a pack of Brahmin.

Still, somethin' told her Gannon wasn't keen on chasing women, or _females_ for that matter.

The Cachino guy they were supposed to find turned out to be an tight-lipped bag of dicks - until they found dirt on him in his room, which Cass gingerly picked out from under a pile of chems. With Six shoving that damning sheaf of paper in his face, that smarmy bastard went all loose-tongued and boot-licking, and Cass wanted nothing more than to break the dickhead's jaw.

The three of 'em had split up then, each having a mouth to loosen up for more dirt. Aside from being hit on by the sloshed rabble throughout the casino, Cass found that she didn't have much to do, not when the 'contractor' had his lips sewed tight. Cass was frustrated, sure, since she'd preferred her fists or her gun to do the talking, but the bottle of malt whiskey she nicked from his countertop on the way out more than made up for it.

When she arrived at the rendezvous point, she saw Six perched on a barstool, her cap tipped low over her head at the bar. Cass couldn't figure out if Six's eyes hurt from all the flashy lights, or she just didn't want to be disturbed, but that was before Cass noticed the harlot edge closer to the courier, face all dolled-up and dainty with cracking powder. Those crooning, simpering tones made Cass' hair stand on edge, making an offer for some fun for the night, even after Six's dismissive waves. It seemed harmless, until the slattern's wandering hands started to touch the courier.

Cass saw wounded, mangy beasts too many times to count, being a child of the wastes, and their death throes resembled no more than desperate, spastic flailing. To say that Six shied away from the whore's touch would be an understatement, because Six _flinched_ away like a hurt animal, violently enough to rattle the bottles on the countertop.

_Feel up someone else, whore._

_You're going to miss out on a lot of fun, honey._

_My friend ain't interested._

Cass remembered getting that _harpy_ off their backs eventually with steel in her words, and a little shove after when the whore trailed a finger down Cass' arms. Six had stayed silent, and if Cass' eyes weren't screwed over by age, she swore Six looked a hell lot tinier than a few moments ago. Almost as if she was burrowing deeper into herself - away from what, Cass had no fucking idea.

_Six, you alright? Ronnie's coming._

Cass knew a light touch on Six's shoulder ain't gonna help, not when the trembles in the woman's shoulder were anything but normal.

_Six?_

_I'm fine. Is Veronica here?_

_Yeah, skipping over like a flighty lakelurk. Don't think I wanna know what she spikes her morning InstaMash with._

_Mentats. She lugs a carton in her pack._

That episode had been enough to give Cass pause, now that she knew about it. Watching Six lead them round this shitstorm of vice and sin, she saw it then, the wide berth Six gave the whores in this joint. She didn't want to believe the whispers and reasons her mind was spewing - not 'cause of disgust, no, but the fact that she hadn't the faintest ideas on handling the jagged fragments of people broken _that_ way, if Six even was.

She was there when Six helped a few whores break free from Gomorrah a few nights back, a thankless job that left her shotgun smoking at the end. The mangled Omerta goons were chucked into the nearest dumpster, and Freeside knew no better. She knew she would forget the faces of the thugs she shot in time, but she wasn't so sure about the whores they'd babied into Carlitos' arms. It wasn't everyday that Cass saw the whores for who they were - the downtrodden tryin' to earn enough caps for a hot meal to fill their bellies.

No, she wasn't like them _at all_ , but that hadn't been enough to chase away the bitter aftertaste of her musings, hours after the sweat had crusted on the grip of her shotgun.

**

Cass _hated_ waiting.

She kept telling herself it had nothing to do with the sensation of waiting for caravans that never came, but those words ain't seemed to stick.

Ten, _ten_ fucking minutes since Six had been carted into that room with the dickhead in tow, the nature of that meeting bouncing between her ears. Ten minutes of silence before, and untold possibilities thereafter.

She palmed her flask of whiskey with white-knuckled fingers, much to Santangelo's amusement, if the scribe's half-smile meant anything at all.

 _Six's going to be fine, Cass, you know she'll pull through,_ Santangelo said, voice thick with belief, while she swirled a bottle of sarsaparilla in her hands. Thinking back to the woman in the tent, back at Searchlight, Cass thought better of saying anythin'. Hope and belief were in short supply these days, and the way she saw it, Santangelo didn't need hers shattered again.

Just as Cass slammed her flask on the bartop, muffled gunshots tore through the silence, and her legs immediately took her to a door she threw open with palms slicked with sweat. Her heart had never thudded as hard as it did when her eyes flitted across the tiny room, ignoring the flashes of could-have-beens in her mind's eye. She saw blood, she saw bodies, but she saw a smoking barrel in the dickhead's hands and a figure lounging on a faded, red couch.

A person with a gray field hat.

Cass remembered standing in the doorway with her shotgun in her hands, waiting tense, long seconds, before Six looked back with a wide smirk and a blasted cigarette jammed between her lips. The puffs of smoke curled in lazy tendrils round her face, a stark mismatch to Cass' shaky hands that clumsily wiped themselves on her faded, torn jeans.

 _I told you_ , Santangelo piped up from behind her, before walking away and making noisy slurps with her goddamn straw.

Cachino barreled past Cass seconds later - _alive_ \- but Cass didn't give a flying fuck about that because she wanted _answers_ , and she would prise 'em from Six's mouth one way or another. No matter that Cass thought Six's time had come just a few moments ago.

_You lettin' that bastard go?_

_He carried out his promise._

_Ain't you remember what Joana said 'bout that fuckhead?_

_Yeah._

_Six, what the hell are you tryin' to pull here?_

_Better him than another thug who wants to play God._

Of course Cass didn't like it. Cachino was probably goin' to terrorize more Joanas, 'cause he was still useful to the NCR. Fuckin' _politics_.

But she didn't say anything no more, 'cause of the way Six's face darkened after her questions, and that set off little alarm bells in her mind. There was something Cass was missing, but she couldn't seem to grasp it.

As long as that remained, she figured that 'twas better to keep her trap shut.

* * *

_Cute, ain't it? I'm goin' to drink my liver to death, and you're gonna smoke your lungs out._

_We're living on borrowed time._

_Damn, spend more time with Gannon and I won't understand the shit that comes out of your mouth no more - nah, just pullin' your leg._

_I wasn't supposed to leave that cemetery._

_Glad you did. Someone had to help me mow down some shitheads._

* * *

Where the _fuck_ was Six? Seemed like when Cass needed to borrow her gun care kit, that woman just _had_ to disappear. The fact that it wasn't the first time only made her gnash her teeth harder.

When she returned to their table at the Wrangler after a fruitless round of scouring the rundown building for Six, Gannon and Santangelo tried to talk her out of it, tellin' her that Six would be fine, that Six would be back soon enough. The twinge in her gut said otherwise, because Gomorrah happened, and that had been a couple of hours before.

 _Come on, Cass, she managed to outsmart the Omerta bosses,_ Santangelo told her in a burble. Gannon chuckled in that airy laugh of his, but Boone simply stared at his glass in silence.

It explained everything, Cass knew, because if they'd recognized the foul mood Six had dragged around like a Legion slave, they wouldn't be as flippant, wouldn't they?

So Cass left, foul words spilling from her mouth in vexation with her shotgun in tow. The Garrett brother eyed her like she'd sprouted horns, so she stared him down with challenge in her eyes.

Boone stopped her at the door - how the _fuck_ did he do that? - and her breath caught in her throat at his words. He was just like Six, his clipped and brusque tones burying his worry under a shitload of nonchalance. It made them predictable, and _that_ she needed, when the Mojave was goin' to hell all around her.

_Six left a few hours back, though with more drink than she could stomach._

_You're not goin' to find her?_

_Was about to, until you showed up. Trust me, she'd rather talk to you._

Boone gave her a curious look that ain't sat well with her, before he shut the door in her face. Weren't they supposed to be like, an item?

Being as pragmatic as ever, Cass willfully forgot such annoying technicalities in time, while trudging through the darkened alleys of Freeside in search of an elusive woman. The further her feet took her, the more she was convinced that she'd be better off making friends with Caeser. Six knew how to hide herself in these ruins too fucking well, and Cass wasn't gettin' any younger.

A brick clattered a few feet away from her, and her shotgun was in her hands faster than she could blink. After Vault 22, it got hammered into her that too many things could hide in the dark. Cass thought she had heard funny, that her ears were screwing with her mind - until she picked out a little light amongst the wrecked walls of the building ahead. 'twas too small for a tinlight but too sustained for match, and now Cass knew where to go, just as the wind kicked up plaster dust in her face.

 _Six will be fine, Six can take care of herself, Six wiped out the Omerta lynchpins, Six reasoned with McNamara, yada yada yada_ , Cass grumbled, climbing over the clutter and debris of a crumbling shophouse. They only saw Six the hero, for fuck's sake. Was she the only one who saw the strains that were beginning to show? Seemed like the longer this bitchfight over the Mojave lasted, the more Six would remember, and the more Six would feel like shit.

It didn't help that Six carried packages in this shithole desert to _forget_ about her past in the first place, whatever it was.

A pot-holed staircase and a hole in the wall later, Cass spotted the lone figure huddled in the corner of the balcony. A familiar scoped rifle leant against the parapet, inches away from the person admiring the lights of the Strip. The closer Cass got to the person, the more her lungs heaved, struggling to breathe through the smothering weight of tobacco. She braved the fumes anyhow, gingerly batting away the clouds before sitting beside Six with her shotgun by her side.

_Took off like a Fiend after chems, you did._

_I needed time alone._

_Must've been some serious shit. Glugged down half a case of Absinthe, did you?_

_What do you want, Cass?_

_You want me to go? Sure, I can do that._

_No, don't. I'm sorry. Just-I just needed to sort out what I remembered._

_Don't have to tell me. I'm fine with not knowin'._

Six didn't speak for a long while, so Cass simply kept vigil, watching out for the odd thug or raider in the streets at this godforsaken hour. Knowing about the shit that went down with Betsy and the Fiends, she decided that she'd rather not take any chances. It wasn't just Fiends who could rape, and no one seemed to realise that.

_I never did tell you why I enlisted, did I?_

_Nah, just said you were proud of your Da._

_Well, I needed the caps badly. After Da's money ran out, mam sold herself. Every night. I couldn't take it after a while, couldn't let her do it. Couldn't bear to see her with scratches and bruises every morning._

Six was worrying her bottom lip, teeth pinching pink lips. Even with her cigarette out of her mouth and between her fingers, her confession was stilted and halting.

_I don't know if she really stopped, but my sis wrote that she did, after a while._

_Whoa there, you tried your best, innit?_

Cass cringed, hearing her words come out flat and terribly _inadequate_. She never had a problem with her confounding feelings, but this time, it wasn't about her. Seeing the glass bottles littered around Six, Cass did the only thing that came to mind. It seemed ridiculous after a moment's thought, but she did it anyway.

She got up, hefted the jingling case of drink with a grunt, and threw it over the wall.

The almighty crash resembled the one time Santangelo knocked over a shelf of empty Nuka Cola bottles back at the bottling plant, but the shattering of glass that scratched against her ears didn't hurt as bad after she saw the wide-eyed look on Six's face. Other days, she would've _laughed_ her ass off at the sight.

_Thought you needed to pull the plug on drinkin', least for today, cause you smell like a bar._

_But you smashed a lot of the good stuff._

_Hey, I suck at this thing, so don't expect me to make lakelurks dance and rainbows appear._

_You sure are big on theatrics, eh?_

_Had to do it, somehow. Got ya to smile again, too._

_Go back to the Wrangler, Cass. I can take care of myself._

_Bullshit. You never know what'd be lurkin' round these parts._

Rather than answer, Six puffed on her cancer stick instead, inhaling deeply before letting it all out in a steady stream of gray. But the woman scooted closer to Cass, and that was invitation enough.

Times like these, Cass got reminded that words were unnecessary 'round Six. She'd come to know that sometimes, being there was all that Six needed, aside from the occasional snark to to put a smile on that face. That was how Cass would spend most of her nights by the fire, before crawling into her bedroll.

She didn't know how it happened, but somewhere in the night, Six's head had found its way into her lap, with her trembling form curled up in a tight ball on the dust-caked floor. Muffled sobs halted the still of the night, and Cass was left reeling from the sudden outpouring of emotion.

 _I don't know myself anymore,_ Six might've mumbled through the incoherent gasping and sniffling.

Cass was absolutely _clueless_ as to why Six was quietly bawling her heart out. Maybe the woman needed a good cry to release all that pent-up tension in her bones, whatever, but her fingers started stroking Six's hair in some measure of comfort anyway, the field cap lying all but forgotten on the floor nearby. Cass felt the bumps of healed scars, crisscrossing under soft, black hair, and she began to understand, she hoped. Began to piece together the fragments that outlined Six's past, even if the woman herself ain’t remember it anymore.

She hummed a simple lullaby in her tribal tongue, the familiar tune stirring memories of her mam, of days when sleep eluded her too. She tried, she really did, and she prayed that this would be enough to calm Six down, as the dampness spread on her jeans.

By then, all thoughts of gun oil and dusty barrels were long gone, fleeting and irrelevant in that moment. Half the time, she hadn't had the foggiest about Six's thoughts, but she guessed that it didn't matter in the end. Six needed a shoulder to lean on, a hand to hold - a _friend_ \- and that, Cass could do.

She just wanted Six to be happy.

**

It was a pipe dream, thinking that she could drag Six back to the Wrangler hours ago. A dream dashed so irrevocably when Six fell asleep on her lap.

'twas funny, seeing how it wasn't Six who pulled the night shift this time, but Cass didn't have the heart to wake her. Especially not when Six's eyes now had an unhealthy red tinge to 'em.

Cass had probably nodded off sometime in the night, 'cause the next time her eyelids cracked open, her eyeballs were stinging from the pale glow of the morning. Cass tried her damnest to pop her sore joints without much fidgeting, but Six stirred, fumbling for her glasses that Cass had put aside in the night. Soon, Six's fingers wrapped around her withered cap, and her free hand jerked towards her tousled hair.

_So you felt them._

There wasn't horror or accusation in Six's words, but quiet resignation.

_Yeah. One heck of a wound._

_That's me, Cass. A useless, walking corpse._

_Don't say that, Six._

_What's the point in denying?_

_You're doin' some good in this shithole, Six, don't you dare forget that._

Silence - and when Six chose that over an answer, Cass understood that cue better than anyone. So many questions, most of them without answers, but Cass held her tongue. The _damned_ woman sure knew how to keep a lady waitin'.

It was a long walk back, Cass would admit, for the words left unsaid were dragging her feet and tugging at her sense of time. She made a snarky remark about the weather, only to be met by more quiet - but the fleeting touch on her arm told her Six would be alright in time. That was reassurance enough.

She barely spotted Santangelo in a corner near the stage the moment they entered the Wrangler, 'cause Santangelo's lowered hood blended perfectly against the peeling wallpaper. Seemed like Six didn't, cause the woman heedlessly trudged towards the staircase with her hat hung low over her head.

Cass cornered the scribe at the table, and Santangelo plopped back on her seat with undisguised weariness.

_Thought you liked your sleep, Ronnie._

_Well, someone had to sit here before Boone was okay with napping._

Feeling the itch of remorse in the back of her throat, Cass mumbled an apology, even though Santangelo deserved it. Seemed like the scribe knew that too, and the disbelieving _yeah right_ Cass heard sent them into a fit of contagious chuckles.

_So much for Six being fine and capable enough to look after herself, eh._

_Glad you know. You waited for us? Ronnie, that's sweet of you._

_Well, someone had to do it. Boone stayed up all night waiting for you lovebirds._

_Loveb- Where'd you get that crackpot idea?_

_Oh, please. Don't tell me you don't see how Six acts around you?_

_Doesn't she do that around everyone?_

_Six talks philosophy with Arcade, tinkers her guns with me, and drags Boone along to shoot Legion jarheads, but who does she talk to half the time we're hiking all over the Mojave?_

_Uh, not me?_

_Cass, you poor child. I'm losing caps the longer you drag this on._

_You WHAT?_

_We've been betting on how long it'd take before both of you have a good tumble in the sheets. Don't look all surprised now, Searchlight kind of made it obvious._

_Santangelo, listen 'ere, I've known Six for a couple o' years._

_All the more, don't you think?_

_No, 'cause I don't feel like...banging her - well, not anymore. What's so bad bein' best lads?_

_Losing my caps, obviously. Rose of Sharon Cassidy, not feeling the urge to fuck the brains out of everything she sees?_

_Shut it, scribe. I know about your sexbot kink._

_Hey now, that’s a low blow._

Santangelo left eventually, still moaning about the sleep she'd lost while 'waiting for the pair', but the grin she sported took away the rancor in her words.

Comrades, friends - Cass used to believe that they never existed, unless they happened to be fuckbuddies. Still, those assholes left anyway, so they didn't count.

She'd come to know a few blockheads ever since Six asked her nicely to chaperone her sorry ass across the Mojave, one of them happening to be lumbering back to their room the Garrets gave 'em. Sometimes, Cass couldn't help but feel beyond her years, having to play babysitter to a bunch of morons, but soon enough, they became _her_ morons, rather than a bunch of idiots she needed to knock some sense into - preferably against a concrete wall.

They fuck you up real badly, she mused, a warm bottle of whiskey wedged between her palms. These _feelings_ , beyond the familiar realm of caps.

In spite of everything, even after watching Gannon almost fall off the Wrangler's staircase, his hair a frizzy mess of bed hair, it felt better knowing that someone had her back, especially when she couldn't. Those days, she'd be surrounded by fuckloads of chems - stimpaks included - and it took all of her willpower and their words to stop her from smashing every last syringe and bottle she saw.

'Course, she'd never say it during their caravan nights amidst the noise and bustle of the Wrangler, but she wasn't about to forget the giddiness of camaraderie anytime soon.

Not when it gave her a reason to wake up everyday, in spite of everything the wasteland threw at them.


	3. Act 3

_Been fiddlin' with terminals with Ronnie, haven't you?_

_Why?_

_Remember how ya used to blow up terminals with a press of a button?_

_There came a point when I needed to know, if I wanted to live._

_How fucked up could it possibly be?_

_Abominations wearing gas masks and Pre-War tech out for my blood._

* * *

Ever since Six had helped the Garret twins with some _issues_ on the lowdown, they'd secured a roof over their heads at the Wrangler, 'cause Six never liked the feel of the suite back at the Lucky 38 - it gave Cass the willies too. She wasn't keen on livin' together with a bunch of Securitrons and a guy she'd only seen on a screen, cause the whole thing felt like a hidden satchel charge just waitin' to blow up.

Blow up it did, when they found Mr House all shrivelled up in the basement, hooked up to whirring machines through a cock tube. Messiah or not, even his celebrity status ain't did shit, 'cause Six blew his head up with a few shots from her pistol on orders from the surly Colonel. That marked the ignominious end of Vegas' prodigal son - bad way to go, Cass thought.

Even then, it took Ronnie a few days with the security terminals and all of them kicking the remains of every Securitron in the tower out into the streets before the Six would even sit still in the hotel, let alone touch a bottle of Rum & Nuka in the fridge of the Presidential Suites. When Gannon ribbed her on her paranoia, Six began babblin' about _brains in robots_ , but her stricken face made Cass unconsciously file away those words in her mind.

Six didn't always drag people along with her on the shitload of things she had to do, bein' the poster girl for the NCR and what not. Funnily enough, whenever she did, Cass always found herself covering that woman's sorry hide, leaving Cass with little time for herself. Sure, her caravans were all but ash, but there were caps to be made in the fuckfest of the Mojave - with a bunch of new caravans, of course.

That was why she was pushin' numbers around with a pencil in hand, trying to make the most of her caps in a cocktail lounge past its prime, when she heard the weary groan of elevator doors slide open. The moment those doors opened, Six emerged, hurrying straight towards the windows. That was the first of the woman Cass saw in a couple of weeks.

Cass stifled a sigh, hoping that the courier wouldn't see her at her corner with her papers splayed all over the table. She wasn't in the mood for chitchat, big bottle of whiskey or not.

In the end, Six didn't bother her, stewing in silence with her forehead flush against the crystalline surface. Maybe Six didn't want to talk anyway, cause the most Six did was to send a glance Cass' way when the whiskey bottle was three quarters empty and the sun hung high over the hills. It felt almost wistful, that sidelong look, but chaotic scribbles on paper drowned out the silent plea that begged to be heard - or maybe Cass was just seeing things.

 _Damned_ whiskey was mucking about with her emotion again.

Five times Cass snuck a peep at the figure leaning against the glass, and five times she saw Six fiddling with her neck as if a collar had been looped around it. But the one time Cass didn't, Six had left as quietly as she came.

* * *

Gannon was sure as hell havin' a good time with his new plasma gun ( _holorifle_ , he shouts over the carnage), the yellow monstrosity spitting waves of energy that burnt through the Legion bodies throwing themselves at him.

Idiotic _whackjobs_. Wasn't everyday when sports equipment and knives could murder a fellow with a gun.

Then again, it wasn't like Cass ain't wanted them to. The more the merrier, and less filth would taint the Mojave. Just another day in Six's band of misfits, scything through Legion hordes and cutting the NCR some slack in runnin' this desert. Still, she couldn't help but wonder if Boone and Six spent all their time cooking up reasons to hit Legion forces everywhere, being the ones with sticks up their arses and huge chips on their shoulders.

She heard the sickening _crunch_ of bone, harsh and jarring even in the tumult of the skirmish, before flecks of red liquid warmed her cheeks. The pretty-boy in the feathery can suit lay sprawled in the dirt, head bent at an unnatural angle and a leg reduced to a bloody stump - Six or Boone's handiwork, undoubtedly. Didn't help that Six's merry band of misfits knew how to kill, too.

Cass holstered her scattergun at last, Cottonwood Cove wiped clean through lead and plasma. The heat and smoke intermingled with burnt flesh, so she hurried alongside Six, eager to spare her keen sense of smell the agony. Last she heard, Santangelo had ran off to the slave pen with Gannon to free Legion slaves, and Cass absently hoped that their efforts weren't going to be for naught. Too much blood had soaked the dirt they walked on, and much more of that had yet to come.

 _Find something we can use,_  the Major had mentioned back at Camp Golf, troop movements or supply plans. _Better yet, plant a bug in their radio._ Which was a crapload of _stupid_ , 'cause Caeser himself probably knew about the bloodbath here already, so wouldn't they check their radios for shit like this?

_Don't think they know how to do that, Cass._

_Oh, they do. They ain't like the scattered savages of the East._

Papers were everywhere in their HQ - in neat, organized stacks befitting the Legion's discipline. 'Course, that allowed Six to easily grab what they came for with the barest of glances, together with a few wayward packs of smokes on top of the radio.

Too easy, Cass felt, her gut roiling with unease. Nobody had been fried with shishkebabs, Boone made as many headshots as Six while Gannon hadn't found the need to pass stimpaks around yet. She wanted to ask Six about it, if only to ease the dull ache of tension through reassurance - but just as Cass' lips curled around the words of an unspoken question, a muffled blast drowned out her voice, freezing the blood in her veins.

They _never_ used explosives, not even the nifty little grenades that spewed shrapnel and tore ghouls apart faster than the Brotherhood. Six's face was reason enough, with numerous hairline scars and part of an eyebrow shorn clean as souvenirs of flying shrapnel. So they'd silently agreed to use anything but that, and Six knew no better - until recently, that is.

Cass knew all of this as she and Six ran out of the Legate's quarters and down the HQ's groaning metal steps, the sudden dryness of her throat almost making her gag. There wasn't much to figure out the moment the blast tore through the quiet of the dead, but _fuck no_. She wasn't an optimist, but it felt good to believe that Gannon and Ronnie were fine. A sidelong glance, and Cass knew Six felt the same. She wished that her old legs could move faster, _further_ , because the steps were just fucking _endless_ and was she even making progress? Fuck this shit and Caeser's _thrice-damned_ dykes.

Where the _hell_ where they? She kept hoping under her breath that they weren't too late, until she was yanked around by the collar hard enough to make her hat slide down her face. Her palms that had pushed up the hat's rattan rim left her cheeks damp, but after seeing what was arrayed in front of her, she wished she hadn't done that at all.

Red spatters adorned Santangelo's stricken face, and a doctor too intimate with death hugged that same woman forced to grow up beyond her years. The same could be said of the wastelanders, a mother embracing her child in whatever measure of comfort it stood for, as the trail of crimson led outward on earth cracked by the desert heat.

Cass refused to look for the bits and pieces that were wet and red and _so very_ real. She didn't need to know, nor find what was already plain to see.

_Hey, Ronnie tried her best._

Cass was glad the wastelander woman nodded her assent through tear-filled eyes, cause it would've been easy to scapegoat the scribe, but it _wasn't_ Veronica who'd cooked up this cockshit idea of slapping bomb collars on people. Knowing that Mrs Weathers thought so too made Cass' shoulders sag in relief. At least the world ain't that chock full of fucktards and idiots.

Cass offered to escort 'em to the refugee place - Aerotech, was it? - but Mama Weathers shook her head before Cass realised the sheer idiocy of her words, 'cause _obviously_ they ain't wanted reminders of dead Papa Weathers dragged around by her. Cass hurried to apologize, but Mrs Weathers shook her noggin' again with a tight smile.

_He wasn't the best of fathers, but I guess he still loved us._

_Sammy's there,_ a red beret supplied, as quickly as he appeared. Mama Weathers' outstretched hand to her kid sitting on the ground stilled, as if the illusion of hope would shatter if she moved, and Boone completed the thought ringing in their heads. _Sammy Weathers, your son._

Faster than a coyote, the sobbing woman threw her arms around him with countless _thank-you_ 's on her lips.

Seeing Boone awkwardly pat the woman's back brought a smile to Cass' face, her lips mouthing a silent ' _p_ _riceless_ '. It was better this way, having some semblance of level-headedness and calm around since Gannon couldn't do so, and Six wasn't able to. Evidently, being a mentat junkies ain't did shit for the scribe and the doc, 'cause Ronnie's eyes were rimmed with tears and Gannon had shuffled away to the water's edge, wipin' his grubby glasses on the folds of his lab coat. So much for them sweets making you loosen up better.

Cass looked up when she heard the crunch of gravel, only to see the sniper edge close to the scribe, further away and free from the clutches of the wastelanders heading up towards Highway 95. And it looked like he finally had _somethin'_ to say, thank the Lord.

_You can't save everyone, Veronica. Best if you learnt that soon._

His words were dispassionate yet empathetic, but a surprise nonetheless. He picked up the pair of bomb collars at his feet, and flung 'em wordlessly into the depths of the bay.

But his eyes were glazed over in remembrance too, no matter that he'd just said otherwise.

**

_You didn't seem worried back there when you came running with Six._

_Yeah, I thought Ronnie could disarm bomb collars without explodin' them._

_Ah, I keep forgetting that you're the oldest-_

_Gannon, you really goin' to say that?_

_-and wisest of us all._ _Fine, be a grouch._

She caught Six sneakin' a peek at her while Gannon had been prattling on, with one of her eyebrows slanted in scrutiny, but the woman looked away before Cass could do anything about it.

_What the fuck happened there, Doc?_

_Failsafe kicked in, so Mr Weathers ran as far as he could._

Insignificant words of reassurance couldn't wipe away the memory of that clusterfuck like a spot of dirt on a caravan's wheel, so she hadn't tried offerin' any to the scribe. Just a little squeeze of the scribe's shoulders a mile out from Forlorn Hope, and Cass received a mumbled _thanks_ in return. A little time alone, and Cass knew Santangelo would get her shit together again.

Vaguely, she wondered where she picked up the habit of squeezing shoulders in the first place, let alone the liberal touching.

**

Six popped the question when it was just the both of them at the mess table in Forlorn Hope, when all they wanted was food to fill their bellies, and their thoughts miles away from the recent past.

_You sure you're alright, Cass?_

_Ha-fuckin'-ha. Yeap. Chill like iced Nuka-Cola._

Some troopers in the mess line gawked at them so Cass tried to scowl back, but Six beat her to it, giving them a little thumbs-up to raucous cheers. The woman had shot to stardom within the troops after Nelson, and it ain't looked like it was goin' to change. It did seem like Six was genuinely gettin' quite cushy with the attention, instead of the suppressed nervy trembling she used to do. It wasn't that Six ain't had the confidence before, just that she always looked like she wanted to bolt the first chance she got. Definitely a hand-me-down from amnesia and her insecurities, seeing how Six believed that she'd shatter eventually - but she hadn't.

Obviously, Six didn't believe her, in the way she twirled her spoon in wait - an opening, Cass realised. It was a chance for Cass to say something, but Ronnie appeared first with her plate piled high with the army slop that passed as rations, and the spoon clatters on a battered plate with a jangle.

_Awesome display of juggling there, eh Six?_

_Yeah, thinking of joining the Aces after all this. Wanna tag along?_

_Maybe. I don't like having mutfruit and horsenettle thrown at me, though._

Of course, Six and the scribe laughed after their brief exchange, self-deprecating humour all around and a hallmark of both, and Cass couldn't help but let loose an amused snort. Sure, Cass had realised long ago that she actually cared about the _morons_ she travelled with, and there ain't nothing she could do about it even if she wanted to.

But admitting it? It just wasn't her way.

* * *

_This Ulyssus chap sounds like a dick._

_A dick who can help me._

_Really, Six?_

_You told me the past was better off forgotten._

_I need to know._

_Listen, the Divide's a hellhole of dust storms and rads._

_That's why I'm doing this alone._

_In your fucking dreams, Six._

* * *

Something big was gonna happen soon - she couldn't shake off the tingling in her bones, and it wasn't 'cause of the chilly Mojave nights. Even after standing in front of a hotplate, clad in a woolen sweater and loose trousers, the heat didn't seem to reach her toes.

Earlier, some Legion asshole tried blasting Kimball's head open with a sniper rifle, but he fled like a mongrel after his shot glanced off Mr President's armoured vest. That ass probably thought he'd gone off easy, but he sure hadn't counted on a scribe and a cowgirl waiting for him at the bottom of the tower he fired from. That's why her arm had to be wrapped in crepe bandages, 'cause the Legion fellow just had to lash out with his combat knife at the last moment. The gash hurt like _hell_ , but the fucker had his dues when Santangelo bashed his skull in with a blow that sent him flying over the parapet and into the Colorado River. Nobody would miss him, that was for sure, but it meant that Caeser's boys were ready to pour into the Mojave.

Cass dropped some fission batteries into the cooker with a splash, pausing only to crush the mutfruit already floating in the hot liquid with her wooden spoon. The fermented sludge had been simmerin' over the fire ever since the medics let her go, and now, more than seven hours later, the smell of grain overpowered even the stench of dank hydraulics and musty furniture.

Half past two, the clock showed, hanging from its corner in the room she'd appropriated for her needs, army protocol be damned. Totally by accident at first, thinking she'd stumbled back into the quarters the brass had let them use, only to realise it was the officer's lounge - with a goddamn _hotplate_. The way she saw it, the Dam was big enough for the army the NCR had here, so she didn't give a ghoul's arse if she wasn't supposed to set up shop here. If she wasn't going to pull through, it seemed only right for her to end it with how she began it. Made her first bottleful of Moonshine when she started ferryin' goods between towns, so she figured it'd be fucking _poetic_ to drink it again before the crazy bastards got to her. Just that she didn't expect Santangelo there too, scrubbing parts of her dissembled power fist till they gleamed. The jitters had kept Cass antsy and awake enough to crave for a stiff drink at this ungodly hour, and she wouldn't be surprised if that was Ronnie's reason too.

The solution fizzed with a _zap_ , and Cass quickly rolled up the sleeves of her ratty sweater before the woolen fibres could fall into the liquid - an experience she wasn't keen on livin' through a second time. She covered the pot again, before moving to bucket on the floor that held her precious moonshine.

Amazingly, the still hadn't been that hard to put together with the things she found lying around the Dam. Surgical tubing from the medics, a pressure cooker that was already on the hotplate in the room, and a clean cotton shirt from the Farber kid. A bit of tinkering, something Cass picked up after months of observing the scribe, and she'd rigged up the nifty distillery in less than an hour.

She half-filled two glasses with drips of clear liquid from the tubing, before emptying a bottle of water from the countertop into both. Moonshine was pure grain alcohol, and she wasn't about to drink herself into a stupor if she could help it, not when hell was about to break loose. This time, she just needed a pick-me-up - and that meant watered-down swill.

Santangelo didn't look up when the filled glass thudded on the table in front of her, her eyes fixed instead on dirtied cloth rubbing circles on chrome barrels. The poor lass was obviously anxious, so Cass thought the better of initiating banal conversation. So it was just them with the quiet thoughts of death knockin' on their door, with every sip of drink that Cass took being as good as the seconds that ticked unfailingly closer to _something._

Only when the jarring impact of a bolt hitting the floor rang heavily in the hush, did the scribe finally throw her cloth on the metal pile with a huff.

_Give it rest, Ronnie. Glass ain't gonna drain by itself._

_Is that how you do it? Drown yourself in alcohol?_

_Six and I don't lug around bottles of booze for shits and giggles, I'd have you know._

_Okay. Okay. I guess you're still sprightly at forty for a reason._

With the way the scribe squared her shoulders before taking tentative sips, Cass figured that the scribe wasn't friends with alcohol in general. It made the effort worthwhile, at least, seeing the rosy flush spread like wildfire across Santangelo's cheeks as the moonshine made short work of the brown-robed woman.

_Better?_

_Maybe, if it didn't taste like batteries._

Cass would've revealed to the scribe the secret ingredient in her moonshine, if not for the figure she spotted lingering at the fringes of her sight. She tilted her head slightly and Six's profile came into view, said woman leaning against the metal doorway with arms crossed on her chest. She probably spent a wee bit too long eyeballin' Six's haggard eyes and pinched cheeks, but Ronnie didn't seem to think much of her silence. Instead, the scribe had chosen to fumble around the bottom of the table for the missing bolt.

_Well, you gonna stand there and rot all night?_

_Wasn't sure if I was welcome._

_Huh, Cass, who's there?_

_You'll see. Drink your swill, Ronnie._

She was getting too old for this shit, her bones cracking in agreement when she got to her feet. A cup and a bottle of water later, she placed the filled glass on the table in front of the courier.

Six glugged down most of the moonshine in a single swig and sighed.

_Oliver doesn't know what he's doing. No idea why he listens to me, a washed-out ex-Sergeant, instead of his staff._

_Reason why NCR couldn't hand Legion their rumps back to them, aye?_

_Aye. At least I can relay Hsu's advice._

_See Boone anywhere?_

_Around the Dam. Said he wanted to scout out the place for his snipers._

Being ex-NCR grunts, Six and Boone had been busy runnin' around with a fuckload of errands to do, leaving freelancers like her and Santangelo with too much time to kill. Though, without the smartass Doc and the sourpuss mute around, the table felt _mightily_ empty.

_You ever change out of your robes, Ronnie?_

_Of course. Do I feel the need to show you what I wear? Hell no._

_Whoa there, ease up on the snark, Princess. Booze makin' you real feisty._

_P-Princess?!_

_Someone insisted on gettin' a dress for her birthday, I heard._

Verbal barbs - that was how she and Santangelo rolled, vicious teasing bordering on insolence but stopped short of drawing blood. Six and Boone had insisted that they couldn't care less about such back-and-forths between a Follower, a tribal and an ex-Brotherhood Scribe, but both of them had conveniently forgotten that the three of 'em had the eyes to notice the hidden smiles every now and then.

Chatter and booze - it worked once for her, in a border checkpoint on the other side of the Mojave, but then, pink bighorners hadn't been stomping around in the room. Then, dying had been the least of her worries, because she still had her caravans to spend her days on.

Cass supposed it was the lightheadedness of realisation that made her throat clam up in the midst of her spoken reply. She tried forcing out those words, but her lips moved soundlessly, so she did what she did best - a swipe at her empty glass, an an offer to refill theirs too, before a couple o' hurried steps to the gurgling still. Maybe she should ease up on the water and have more of the moonshine; fall back on her drink like a trusty, familiar crutch and fuck what Gannon told her about giving her liver a break.

She tried to stop the trembling in her fingers when she gripped the rubber tubing, because this nervousness and fear _wasn't_ like her, but the alcohol dripped onto the table and her fingers and those drops were so fucking _cold_. She didn't know how the tubing flopped against the bucket's walls or how there was alcohol smeared against her face, just that her head ends up being cradled in her hands, with a groan crawling out of her throat like a dying animal.

In that moment, she found out that she didn't want to die anymore.

_I like you, Six. Didn't think much of you when you walked through the 188._

_What changed?_

_Nobody ever did what you did. And it means a lot to me._

_I just try my best._

_Way more than anyone else, Six. Kinda makes you like my big sister - not saying that you're old, though._

_I..Veronica, I appreciate it._

Maybe she should say somethin' along those lines too before everything went to hell. She never had that chance with Papa and Mama Cassidy, so maybe it'd be worth it to try, lest she regret it again. Anything to make the gnawing nothingness _go away_ , cause moonshine ain't doing shit for her queasy gut right now.

Cass gulped down half a cupful of watered-down swill for good luck, before ambling back to their little circle. The goddamn woman caught her eye with a question in her gaze, and Cass knew she was _screwed_. Had always been, ever since the day Six asked her out to save the wasteland, cause the courier could always read her like an open book.

Santangelo hummed a toneless tune in the background, all the while curled like a baby in her chair.

Six looked at her with a raised eyebrow, and Cass started to rub the nape of her neck with hurried strokes. Words failed her _yet_ again and even mentats couldn't give her a silver tongue if she bothered with those sweets. But fuck it all, she'd always been tryin' too hard finding the perfect words and charming liners that Gannon and Santangelo seemed to conjure out of thin air, and she figured she'd _had it_ with trying to do what her vulgar mouth could never do.

_You look like you need the loo._

_No, 's not that. Just...fuck, it's so bloody hard to say it._

_I thought I had the angelic face._

_Look, Eola. Don't get killed out there. Ain't somethin' I'd like to see._

She doubted the woman even heard any of that, when her strained words were interrupted by blaring klaxons and the heady sense of everything coming apart at the seams, but maybe it was for the best. Maybe words were really superfluous round Six, 'cause the woman probably knew anyway - and it helped that she couldn't poke fun at Cass' words after.

Of course, she wasn't able to see the softening of Six's features with her back turned, and hands busy shaking the scribe back into the realm of wakeful sobriety.

* * *

_Cass, you're wearing more than your shirt out there, right?_

_Yeah, NCR's fine with givin' me an armoured vest, no cost._

_Quartermaster Bardon is handing out freebies? Sure?_

_Well, maybe I slipped him a wee bit of booze to change his mind._

* * *

She'd used to think that the army of rifle-toting boys dressed in ill-fitting leathers were all the NCR had, until she saw the helmeted troops in dusters littered round Hoover Dam over the last few days.

 _Ranger vets from Baja_ , Six had mentioned in passing, the day Kimball thought it cool to drop by the NCR's newest attraction; as if a bunch of savages weren't camped across the river, as if Caeser's boys were too dumb to try anythin'. Then, she'd still thought the Rangers were doin' a pisspoor job at guardin' Kimball, what with having bombs on his vertibird and a Legion pretty boy finding enough space in the security blanket to take potshots at him from one of the Dam's towers.

Now, she was so fuckin' _glad_ she and Santangelo had some of them Rangers together with 'em, 'cause the hordes of red-armoured men throwing themselves at 'em weren't lightening up, not now, and not likely at all.

_Thank the fucking heavens Six had Fixer, Ronnie. Why the fuck didn't you tell me that you've never drunk booze?_

_I thought I could handle it!_

Because if it was just her and her shotgun against the Legion, she ain't think her profligate hide could take such a beating, even with Ranger and sniper support. With Ronnie around, Cass could just lurk around and let the scribe take the beating in her big-ass power armor.

_You've got balls of fuckin' steel, Princess._

_Hey, I like being a girl._

Slowly but surely, they were pushing the Legion out of the Dam and back across the river, helped along by friends of Gannon and Six who either dropped fuckloads of explosives from the sky or vapourised annoying Juggernauts into green goo before their miniguns could roar. There was no escaping the pinging bullets and the thick dust that clogged her nostrils, but her armoured vest and bracers took care of that, the thudding of bullets stopped by thick layers of magic plastic.

Her footsteps slowed the closer they inched towards the Legate's camp - and the Monster of the East - 'cause bullets were now flyin' _everywhere_ , like the blasts and screams happening around her. Every yell was another stab in the side, and she wasn't naive enough to assume the best. Rangers were tough-as-nails, but not invincible.

A bit of C-4 plastic, followed by a detonator press later, and the gates of the camp come crashing down, amidst a hail of bullets from the Legion grunts by the gates with shiny, new rifles. Those Legion grunts ain't mattered anyway, for both their heads exploded in a mass of gore that splattered all over Santangelo's bullet-scored armor like paint. If it weren't for such kills, she would've thought Six and Boone weren't even with the main force bulldozing through Legion personnel.

Then again, staring at the second-biggest jerkward from across the Colorado, cuss word courtesy of the scribe, she questioned the ability of mere bullets in punching through the bastard's fancy can suit. She knew she stood there in terse silence, caked in blood and sweat all over just like the rest of 'em grunts, as if the fucktard's mere presence had glued their feet to the ground. That was until she discerned the fleet-footed steps of a four-eyed figure wearing a drab, field cap from the whistling desert wind; the reason for his silence.

The longer that figure chitchatted with Lanius, the itchier Cass' hands got, wanting to wring a certain person dry for suggesting a _one-on-one_ with a fucking _brute_ of a man. Cass knew she wasn't the only one floored and slack-jawed then, hearing disbelieving grunts 'round her and Ronnie's outright squeal of _what?_

They should've known better than thinkin' that mere words could shove Six off the path she'd set her mind on, because even vicious tongue-lashings and pleading from both Rangers and her merry band couldn't stop the woman from walking into the makeshift arena with a machete in hand. _No_ , even her words couldn't change the mind of Courier Six the Stubborn. _Yes_ , the woman had a deathwish, and they were probably goin' to see her _sliced_ into ribbons in front of 'em.

So Cass turned tail, crouching with her back against the walls of the arena, blind to the ruckus inside but not to the thunderous taunts and shifting of sand under booted heels. She shut her eyes, insisting that the crunching she heard wasn't one of breaking bones or crushed ribs. Felt nice to have somethin' or _someone_ to pray to now, while her fingers rubbed idle circles on the butt of her gun. Santangelo fidgeted beside her, casting shadows of the morning light on her Brahmin-skin boots. Pretty shapes, she echoed to herself, while trying to drown out the growing cheers in Latin.

Seeing ol' Craig walking in circles close by did _shite_ for her peace of mind, because pointless action and Boone didn't belong in the same sentence. She watched the creased faces of the troops who'd made it this far, mentally ticking off the list of troops who'd joined up with 'em partway through the chaos. She'd counted two less, but thought little of it, noticing instead the the weighed-down gazes of the troops who'd seen their comrades die. Those lines etched deeper in a moment - a moment when when a gauntleted hand jostled her shoulder, its owner yelling a strangled curse, and Cass shot to her feet in dread.

Blood, she saw. Plenty of it staining the sand Six lied on, with a heaving brute towering over her. The machete he gripped glinted in the sunlight as the blood on its blade dripped a constant countdown; colouring Six's olive vest that all of 'em wore too. Sadly, they were for bullets, not razor-honed blades that could shear through flesh like butter.

_It has been an honour knowing you, Courier Six._

_Nice to know that Caeser didn't lead a cohort of pathological killers._

_Ordinarily, I'd have you strung up on a cross for such insolence, but you're already a dead woman._

_Quite the cocky bugger, eh Lanius?_

In another setting, Cass would've felt a perverse thrill, hearing octaves that rumbled deep in her bones. Coming from a man bent on crushing one of her friends to an inch though, she dug her fingernails into her palms hard enough to draw blood instead - unwilling to violate whatever Legion tenets of duelling that she knew zilch about by charging into the goddamn arena with her shotgun raised.

No, Six the lucky blighter _had_ to have cards shoved up her sleeve for this, however much she sucked at a real game of Caravan. It would've been so fucking _unfair_ for Six to die like that, the mere thought of it sending molten fury surging through Cass' veins.

Suddenly, a vertibird swooped close out of the blue, whirring propellers and engines roaring a chorale of death that sent the Legion troops diving for cover from nonexistent bullets and bombs. What Cass heard more tellingly in the cacophony was the wet _snarl_ of a wounded beast, before she saw the monstrosity of a man collapse in a heap with a machete sticking out of his neck.

Stunned silence - that was how Cass would describe the affliction plaguing the crowd looking into the circlepit. A study of contrasts between awed Rangers and white-faced Legion troops, ones who'd seen their invincible commander fall and bleed out like another profligate.

It didn't take long before the pretty-boys charged with a rippling war-cry, but it wasn't that hard to blow 'em up with grenades - they were packed close together like a horde of bighorners.

Cass ignored the hollering and cheering, of the ruckus that the NCR grunts were making, 'cause she was already dragging the scribe by the arm back into the arena. Her bones were creaking noisily along the way, but it hadn't occurred to the her that 'twas _because_ she was draggin' Santangelo, whose heavy-ass can suit probably weighted a ton.

They found Six the same way they saw her before the vertibird crashed the party - a leg bent at an unnatural angle and blood caking the sand she laid on. Her cheeks were bit paler than usual, but otherwise, Six looked no worse for wear - and even _that_ was stretching it. A shitload of _something_ seemingly eased in Cass' gut the moment Six's closed lids opened, gray irises sluggishly searching and finding Cass' own.

 _Hey_ , Six croaked weakly, her mouth set in a wide grin. Cass was rendered speechless, while Santangelo waved over a harried medic loaded down with bulging satchels slung all over his wiry frame. Guess the blood loss made the woman _bonkers_ already.

_Hi, Six. Kind of a bad time to be suntanning, eh?_

_You could always join me, Vee._

_In this suit of power armor?_ _I already am._

Bruised ribs, shattered kneecap, minor concussion and shock, the lad diagnosed from his spot by Six's head. A list of maladies that was a wee bit too short, given what Lanius could do, but Cass welcomed it all the same. Better a banged-up courier than a dead one.

_Didn't know you could be that pale, Cass._

_You're so fuckin' lucky the brute did a number on ya, cause I would've broken your jaw for pullin' off a stunt like that, you bloody idiot!_

They tried hooking Six's arms round their shoulders, with Cass grunting in an effort to haul the courier's flagging ass high enough for the woman to wrap an arm round the medic's neck.

_I didn't know you cared, Cass. Love you too._

_Shut up, Six, before I wipe that grin off your face._

_Ooh, do I hear the lovers bickering?_

_You just watch yourself, Santangelo. I'll throttle you in your sleep._

_Wait, Cass, what's this I'm hearing?_

_Dreams of kids who missed puberty, Six. Keep walkin'._

_Damn, where's Arcade when you need him to giggle at lovebirds with?_

By then, the medic's face had turned beet red, and only then did Cass realise what the kid had been saying for quite some time now.

_Uh, ladies, General Oliver's right ahead if you all ain't noticed._

Any notion of continuing that  _embarrassing_ conversation was snuffed out when Cass bonked the scribe on the head with a fist.

Really, this wasn't how Cass had envisioned it to end as they trudged back to the Dam, with the courier hanging off her shoulder and a Brotherhood Scribe in a can suit being the only member of their honour guard. Sure, the Legion corpses strewn everywhere and the occasional saluting trooper gave the walk back some much needed ambience, but that was that. No pomp and fanfare on the way out, or at least until they stepped foot on crumbling driveways and cement floors of the Dam.

She wanted to _tear_ her ears out by the time the blockheaded arse of a General was done with his fucked-up excuse of a congratulatory speech, but it was better than hearing it from Caeser himself, _thank_ goodness. The chems she'd stuffed in her pockets, in case shit really _did_ hit the fan, weren't needed no more so she happily chucked them over the parapet on the way back to their quarters.

She didn't want it any other way, she realised in the mess hall of Forlorn Hope, a cup of warm tea nestled in her hands. Seeing the Bear fly high over the Dam and the faces around her warmed her cold, _cold_ heart far more than she thought possible.

Once, before a ragged woman stumbled into a deadbeat bar by the border, she'd thought the West was where she'd return to and sit tight for the rest of her life, with her caravans bringing in good money throughout the territories. No reason to stay in a place where afternoons promised thirst and dust in her eyes before she could even mutter 'poppycock'. She'd been travelling her whole life after her mam died, without anythin' to tie her down like a pack Brahmin - never got tired of walking across backwater territories or brick-an-stone communities if it meant that she could see the land with whiskey in her belly and her trusty shotgun at her back.

But this time, the itch ain't in her bones no more.

_Cap for your thoughts?_

_Just thinkin' bout what got me here, Six. Not ogling those dapper chaps in the corner with bars on their shoulders._

_If you hadn't replied, I'd have poked you with my crutches._

Letting the general chitchat from Gannon and Santangelo wash over her like a calming tonic, she brought the hot tea to her dry lips, absently wishing that she'd spiked it with a shot of whiskey.

_And give me a heart attack? Damn, never figured you havin' violent tendencies. I mean, didn't ya say that your ugly mug resembled an angel's?_

With the half-smile the courier shot in her direction, Cass realised with a jolt the reason why she even bothered to stay.

**Author's Note:**

> I admit, I probably included too much of myself in this fic. But this was written when I was dealing with toxic shit so it inadvertently became a coping mechanism.
> 
> Either way, recovery narratives give me hope.


End file.
